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THE NEW HYPERION. 



FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF 
THE RHINE. 



BY 



EDWARD STRAHAN. 



; 



&a 



WITH OVER THREE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS FROM DESIGNS 
BY GUST AVE DO RE AND OTHERS. 





PHILADELPHIA 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

1875. 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



5 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



$ 



V 



- 






NOTICE 



This volume, committed to scenes connected with Mr. Longfellow's cele- 
brated romance of Hyperion, travels over ground already made the common 
property of various authors, native and foreign. 

Among the best of these is M. Boniface, who in 1861 wrote a book of 
Hyperion-\Sk.e adventures under his usual pseudonym of X. B. Saintine. 
Where the pathway of this work coincides with his (and especially in cases 
when the pictures by Dore made a special style of description imperative, 
in which cases the frankest resemblance will be found) a very grateful obli- 
gation is* acknowledged by '-The New Hyperion." Toward what author 
could there be an obligation so agreeable, or lying so light, as toward the 
author of Picciola ? 



CONTENTS. 



PART PAGE 

I. PREAMBULARY 7 

II. THE TWO CHICKENS 19 

III. THE FEAST OF SAINT ATHANASIUS 36 

IV. A DAY IN STRASBURG 49 

V. IN PURSUIT OF A PASSPORT 62 

VI. SHALL AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT? 78 

VII. THE SEDUCTIONS OF BADEN-BADEN 96 

VIII. THE MUSIK-FEST AT ACHERN 115 

IX. ASTRAY IN THE BLACK FOREST , 130 

X. A WALK TO WILDBAD 144 

XL THE NECKAR REVISITED: OLD FRIENDS AT HEIDELBERG 

AGAIN 155 

XII. CONFLICTS AT HEIDELBERG 166 

XIII. ON WITH THE OLD LOVE 1S0 

XIV. AN AGREEABLE DUET AT FRANKFORT 194 

XV. EN ROUTE AGAIN 205 

XVI. EMBARKATION AND VOYAGE FROM MAYENCE 211 

XVII. THE CURRENT OF FATE 229 

XVIII. THE DIFFICULTY OF CATCHING UP 237 

XIX. TYING UP THE CLEWS 251 




The New Hyperion 



FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE. 



FJ^RT X. 



PREAMBULARY 




HE behavior of a 
great Hope is like 
the setting of the 
sun. It splashes 
out from under a 
horizontal cloud, 
s o diabolically 
incandescent 
that you see a 
dozen false suns 
blotting the heavens with purple in 
every direction. You bury your 
eyes in a handkerchief, with your 
back carefully turned upon the 
west, and meantime the spectacle 
you were waiting for takes place 
and disappears. You promise 
yourself to nick it better to-mor- 
row. The soul withdraws into its 

depths. The stars arise (offering 

two or three thousand more im- ;J - 
practicable suns), and the night is i~ 
ironical. 



Having already conquered, 
without boasting, a certain suc- 
cess before the reading public, 
and having persuaded an author 



of renown to sign his name to my bant- 
ling, my Expectation and Hope have 
long been to surpass that trifling produc- 
tion. You may think it a slight thing to 
prepare a lucky volume, and, tapping 
Fame familiarly on the shoulder, engage 
her to undertake its colportage through- 
out the different countries of the globe. 
My first little work of travel and geog- 
raphy had exceeded my dreams of a 
good reception. It had earned me sev- 




F.AKLY FAME. 



8 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



eral proposals from publishers; it had 
been annotated with "How true!" and 
" Most profound !" by the readers in 
public libraries ; its title had given an 
imaginative air to the ledgers of book- 
sellers ; and it had added a new shade 
of moodiness to the collection of Mudie. 
The man who hits one success by acci- 
dent is always trying to hit another by 
preparation. Since that achievement I 



have thought of nothing but the creation 
of another impromptu, and I have really 
prepared a quantity of increments to- 
ward it in the various places to which 
my traveling existence has led me. That 
I have settled down, since these many 
years past, at the centre and capital of 
ideas would prove me, even without the 
indiscretions of that first little book, an 
American by birth. I need not add that 



) ^. : i,;.'.;v'r 




fc%^;:v^Kt ^% 



>-• '-^c^h^/ 



THE MECHANIC IN GREEN. 






^^~- 



my card is printed in German text, $aul 
jFItmmtitfl, and that time has brought 
to me a not ungraceful, though a some- 
times practically retardating, circumfer- 
ence. Beneath a mask of cheerfulness, 
and even of obesity, however, I continue 
to guard the sensitive feelings of my 
earlier days. Yes: under this abnormal 
convexity are fostered, as behind a lens, 
the glowing tendencies of my youth. 
Though no longer, like the Harold de- 
scribed in Icelandic verse by Regner 
Hairy-Breeches, "a young chief proud 
of my flowing locks," yet I still "spend 
my mornings among the young maid- 
ens," or such of them as frequent the 
American Colony, as we call it, in Paris. 
I still "love to converse with the hand- 
some widows." Miss Ashburton, who 



in one little passage of our youth treated 
me with considerable disrespect, and 
who afterward married a person of great 
lingual accomplishments, her father's 
late courier, at Naples, has been hand- 
somely forgiven, but not forgotten. A 
few intelligent ladies, of marked listen- 
ing powers and conspicuous accomplish- 
ments, are habitually met by me at their 
residences in the neighborhood of the 
Arc de Triomphe or at the receptions of 
the United States minister. These fair 
attractions, although occupying, in prac- 
tice, a preponderating share of my time, 
are as nothing to me, however, in com- 
parison with that enticing illusion, my 
Book. 

The scientific use of the imagination 
in treating the places and distances of 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



Geography is the dream of my days and 
the insomnia of my nights. 

Every morning I take down and dust 
the loose sheets of my coming book or 
polish the gilding of my former one. It 
is in my fidelity to these baffling hopes 
— hopes fed with so many withered (or 
at least torn and blotted) leaves — rather 



than in any resemblance authenticable 
by a looking-glass, that I show my iden- 
tity with the old long-haired and nasal 
Flemming. 

Yet, though so long a Parisian, and 
so comfortable in my theoretic pursuit 
of Progressive Geography, my leisure 
hours are unconsciously given to knit- 




TRItlMPH OF APRIL. 



ting myself again to past associations, 
and some of my deepest pleasures come 
from tearing open the ancient wounds. 
Shall memory ever lose that sacred, that 
provoking day in the Vale of Lauter- 
brunnen when the young mechanic in 
green serenaded us with his guitar ? It 
had for me that quite peculiar and per- 
sonal application that it immediately 
preceded my rejection by Miss Mary. 
The Staubbach poured before our eyes, 
as from a hopper in the clouds, its 
Stream of Dust. The Ashburtons, clad 
in the sensible and becoming fashion of 
English lady-tourists, with long ringlets 
and Leghorn hats, sat on either side of 
me upon the grass. And then that im- 
placable youth, looking full in my eye, 
sang his verses of insulting sagacity : 

She gives thee a garland woven fair ; 

Take care ! 
It is a fool's-cap for thee to wear ; 

Beware ! beware ! 

Trust her not, 
She is fooling thee ! 

Meeting him two or three times after- 
ward as he pursued his apprentice-tour, I 
felt as though I had encountered a green- 
worm. And I confess that it was part- 



ly on his account that I made a vow, fer- 
vently uttered and solemnly kept, never 
again to visit Switzerland or the Rhine. 
Miss Ashburton I easily forgave. The 
disadvantage, I distinctly felt, was hers, 
solely and restrictedly hers ; and I should 
have treated with profound respect, if I 
had come across him, the professional 
traveler who was good enough to marry 
her afterward. 

But these bitter-sweet recollections are 
only the relief to my studies. It is true 
they are importunate, but they are strict- 
ly kept below stairs. 

Nor would any one, regarding the 
stout and comfortable Flemming, sus- 
pect what regrets and what philosophies 
were disputing possession of his interior. 
For my external arrangements, I flatter 
myself that I have shaped them in tol- 
erable taste. 

My choice of the French capital I 
need not defend to any of my American 
readers. To all of you this consumma- 
tion is simply a matter of ability. I 
heartily despise, as I always did, all 
mere pamperings of physical conveni- 
ence. Still, for some who retain some 



10 



THE NEW HYPERION 



sympathy with the Paul Flemming of 
aforetime, it may be worth while to men- 
tion the particular physical convenien- 
ces my soul contemns. I inhabit, and 
have done so for eight years at least, a 
neat little residence of the kind styled 
"between court and garden," and lying 
(in the utmost permissible circumference 



of the American quarter in Paris — say 
on the hither side of Passy. For nearly 
the same period I have had in lease a 
comical box at Marly, whither I repair 
every summer. My town-quarters, hav- 
ing been furnished by an artist, gave me 
small pains. The whole interior is like 
a suite of rooms in the Hotel Clunv. The 




only trouble was in bringing up the cel- 
lar to the quality I desired and in select- 
ing domestics — points on which, though 
careless of worldly comfort in general, I 
own I am somewhat particular. 

No gentleman valets for me — rude 
creatures presuming to outdress their 
masters. What I wanted was the Cor- 
poral Trim style of thing — bald, faithful, 
ancient retainer. After a world of vex- 



ation I succeeded in finding an artless 
couple, who agreed for a stipulation to 
sigh when I spoke of my grandfather 
before my guests, and to have been 
brought up in the family. 

But I am wandering, and neglecting 
the true vein of sentiment which so 
abounds in my heart. All my pleasure 
is still in mournful contemplation, but I 
have learned that the feelings are most 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



refined when freed from low cares and 
personal discomforts. I was going to cite 
a letter I wrote to my oldest friend, the 
baron of Hohenfels. It was sketched 
out first in verse, but in that form was a 
failure : 

" 15th March. 

"The snow-white clouds beyond my 
window are piled up like Alps. The 
shades of B. Franklin and W. Tell seem 
to walk together on those Elysian Fields ; 
for it was here (or sufficiently nigh for 
the purpose) that in days gone by our 
pure patriot dwelt and flirted with Ma- 
dame Helvetius ; and yonder clouds so 
much resemble the snowy Alps that they 



remind me irresistibly of the Swiss. No- 
ble examples of a high purpose and a 
fixed will ! Do B. and W. not move, 
Hyperion - like, on high ? Were they 
not, likewise, sons of Heaven and Earth ? 
" I wish I knew the man who called 
flowers ' the fugitive poetry of Nature.' 
That was a sweet carol, which I think I 
have quoted to you, sung by the Rho- 
dian children of old in spring, bearing 
in their hands a swallow, and chanting 
'The swallow is come,' with some other 
lines, which I have forgotten. A pretty 
carol is that, too, which the Hungarian 
boys, on the islands of the Danube, sing 
to the returning stork in spring, what 




THE LYRE OF HYPERION. 



time it builds its nests in the chimneys 
and gracefully diverts the draft of smoke 
into the interior. What a thrill of de- 
light in spring-time ! What a joy in being 
and moving ! Some housekeepers might 
object to that, and say that there was 
but imperfect joy in moving ; but I am 
about to propose to you, as soon as I 
have taken a little more string, a plan 
of removal that will suit both us and the 
season. My friend, the time of storms 
is flying before the pretty child called 
April, who pursues it with his blooming 
thyrsus. Breathing scent upon the air, 
he has already awakened some of the 
trees on the boulevards, and the white 
locust-blossoms in the garden of Rossini 
are beginning to hang out their bunches 
to attract the nightingales. He calls to 
the swallows, and they arrive in clouds. 
" He knocks at the hard envelope of 
the chrysalis, which accordingly prepares 
to take its chance for a precarious meta- 



morphosis — into the wings of the butter- 
fly or into the bosom of the bird. How 
very sweet ! 

"Strange is the lesson, my friend, 
which humanity teaches itself from the 
larva. Even so do I, methinks, feed in 
life's autumn upon the fading foliage of 
Hope, and, still feeding and weaving, 
turn it at last into a little grave. A neat 
image that, which, by the by, I stole 
from Drummond of Hawthornden. Do 
you recollect his verse ? — but of course 
I should be provoked if I thought you 
did— 

For, with strange thoughts possessed, 

I feed on fading leaves 

Of hope — which me deceives, 
And thousand webs doth warp within my breast. 
And thus, in end, unto myself I weave 
A fast-shut prison. No ! but even a Grave ! 

"To pursue my subject : April, having 
thus balanced the affairs of the bird and 
the worm, proceeds to lay over the 
meadows a tablecloth for the bees. He 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



opens all the windows of Paris, and on 
the streets shows us the sap mounting 
in carnation in the faces of the girls. 

" My dear Hohenfels, I invite you to 
the festival which Spring is spreading 
just now in the village of Marly. My 
cabin will be gratified to open in your 
honor. May it keep you until autumn ! 
Come, and come at once." 

Having signed my missive, I tucked 
it into an envelope, which I blazoned 
with my favorite seal, the lyre of Hype- 
rion broken, and rang for Charles. In 




INFIRM1TI 



nis stead, in lieu of my faithful Charles, 
it was Hohenfels himself who entered, 
fresh from the Hotel Mirabeau. 

" Look alive, man ! Can you lend me 
an umbrella ?" said he briskly. 

I looked out at the window : it was 
snowing. 

The moment seemed inopportune for 
the delivery of my epistle : I endeavored 
to conceal it — without hypocrisy and by 
a natural movement — under the usual 
pile of manuscript on my table devoted 
to Progressive Geography. But the bar- 
on had spied his name on the address : 
" How is that ? You were writing to me ? 
There, I will spare you the trouble of 
posting." 

He read my sentences, turning at the 
end of each period to look out at the 
snow, which was heavily settling in large 
damp flakes. He said nothing at first 
about the discrepancy, but only looked 
forth alternately with his reading, which 
was pointed enough. I said long ago 
that the beauty of Hohenfels' character, 
like that of the precious opal, was owing 
to a defect in his organization. The 



baron retains his girlish expression, his 
blue eye, and his light hair of the kind 
that never turns gray : he is still slender, 
but much bent. He went over to the 
fireplace and crouched before the coals 
that were flickering there still. Then he 
said, with that gentle, half- laughing 
voice, " Take care, Paul, old boy ! Chil- 
dren who show sense too early never 
grow, they say : by parity of argument, 
men who are poetical too late in life 
never get their senses." 

" I have given up poetry," said I, "and 
you cannot scan that communication in 
your hand." 

"But it is something 
worse than poetry ! It is 
prose inflated and puffed 
and bubbled. You are 
falling into your old 
moony ways again, and 
sonneteering in plain 
English. Are you not 
ashamed, at your age ?" 

"What age do you 
mean ? I feel no infirm- 
ities of age. If my hair 
is gray, 'tis not with years, as By — " 

" If your hair is gray, it is because you 
are forty-eight, my old beauty." 

"Forty-five!" I said, with some little 
natural heat. 

" Forty-five let it be, though you have 
said so these three years. And what age 
is that to go running after the foot of 
the rainbow ? Here you are, my dear 
Flemming, breathing forth hymns to 
Spring, and inviting your friends to pic- 
nics ! Don't you know that April is the 
traitor among the twelve months of the 
year ? You are ready to strike for Marly 
in a linen coat and slippers ! Have you 
forgotten, my poor fellow, that Marly is 
windy and raw, and that Louis XIV. 
caught that chill at Marly of which he 
died ? Ah, Paul, you are right enough. 
You are young, still young. You are 
not forty-eight : you are sixteen — sixteen 
for the third time." 

Hohenfels, whose once fine temper is 
going a little, stirred the fire and sudden- 
ly rose. 

" Lend me an umbrella !" he repeated 
imperatively. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



13 



" Are you in such a hurry to go ? That is not 
very complimentary to me," I observed. "Have 
you done scolding me?" 

What is called by some my growing world- 
liness teaches me to value dryness in an old 
friend as I value dryness in a fine, cobwebbed, 
crusty wine. It is from the merest Sybaritism 
that I surround myself with comrades who, like 
Hohenfels, can fit their knobs into my pattern, 
and receive my knobs in their own vacancy. 
My hint brought him over at once into the 
leathern chair opposite the one I occupy. 

"Paul, Paul," he said, "I only criticise you 
for your good. What have you done with your 
three adolescences ? You are getting stout, yet 
you still write poetically. You have some wit, 
imagination, learning and aptitude. You might 
make a name in science or art, but everything 
you do lacks substance, because you live only 
in your old eternal catchwords of the Past and 
the Future. You can sketch and paint, yet 
have never exhibited your pictures except in 
ladies' albums. You profess to love botany, yet 
your sole herbarium has been the mignonette 
in sewing-girls' windows. You are inoffensive, 
you are possessed of a competency, but in ev- 
erything, in every vocation, you rest in the state 
of amateur — amateur housekeeper, amateur 
artist, amateur traveler, amateur geographer. 
And such a geographer as you might be, with 
your taste for travel and the Hakluyt Society's 
publications you have pored over for years !" 

This chance allusion to my grand secret took 
me from my guard. Hohenfels, blundering up 
and down in search of something to anathema- 
tize, had stumbled upon the very fortress of my 
strength. I deemed it time to let him into a 
part of my reserved intellectual treasure — to 
whirl away a part at least of the sand in which 
my patient sphinx had been buried. 

"I have indeed been a reader," I said mod- 
estly. "When a youth at Heidelberg, I perused, 
with more profit than would be immediately 
guessed from the titles, such works as the Hei- 
den-Buchs and the Nibelungen-Lieds, the Saxon 
Rhyme-Chronicles, the poems of Minnesingers 
and Mastersingers, and Ships of Fools, and 
Reynard Foxes, and Death-Dances, and Lam- 
entations of Damned Souls. My study since 
then has been in German chemistry from its 
renaissance in Paracelsus, and physical science, including both medicine an 
evolution of life. Shall I give you a few dozen of my favorite writers ?" 

"Quite unnecessary," said the baron with some haste. "But I fancied you 
going to speak of geographical authors." 




d the 



14 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



"Are you fond of such writings yourself?" 
I asked. 

"Immensely — that is, not too scientific, you 
know," said the baron, who was out of his 
element here. " Bayard Taylor, now, or some 
such fellows as the Alpine Club." 

"My dear baron, the republications by the 
Hakluyt Society are but a small part of the ref- 
erences I have taken down for my Progressive 
Geography. You admire Switzerland?" 
"Vastly. Steep jump, the Staubbach." 
"But the Alps are only hillocks compared 
with the Andes of Peru, with the Cordilleras, 
with Chimborazo ! Ah, baron, Chimborazo ! 
Well, my dear boy, the system I elaborate 
makes it a matter of simple progression and 
calculation to arrive at mountains much more 
considerable still." 
"Such as — ?" 

"The Mountains of the Moon !" 
I then, in a few dexterously involved sen- 
tences, allowed the plan of my newly-invented 
theory to appear — so 'much of it, that is, as 
would leave Hohenfels completely in the dark, 
and detract in no wise from the splendor of my 
Opus when it should be published. As science, 
however, truly considered, is the art of dilapida- 
ting and merging into confused ruin the theories 
of your predecessors, I was somewhat more pre- 
cise with the destructive than the constructive 
part of my plan. 

"Geographical Science, I am prepared to 
show, is that which modern learning alone has 
neglected, to the point of leaving its discoveries 
stationary. It is not so with the more assidu- 
ously cultivated branches. What change, what 
advance, in every other department of culture ! 
In geology, the ammonite of to-day was for 
Chalmers a parody facetiously made by Na- 
ture in imitation of her living conchology, and 
for Voltaire a pilgrim's cockle dropped in the 
passes of the Alps. In medicine, what prog- 
ress has been made since ague was compared 
to the flutter of insects among the nerves, and 
good Mistress Dorothy Burton, who died but 
in 1629, cured it by hanging a spider round the 
patient's neck "in a nutshell lapped in silk"! 
In chemistry, what strides ! In astronomy, what 
perturbations and changes ! In history, what 
do we not owe to the amiable authors who, dip- 
ping their pens in whitewash, have reversed the judgments of ages on Nero and 
Henry VIII. ! In genealogy, what thanks must we pay to Darwin ! Geographical 
Science alone, stolid in its insolent fixity, has not moved : the location of Thebes 
and Memphis is what it was in the days of Cheops and Rameses. And so poor in 




AMERICAN 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



5 




I 



intellect are our professors of geodesic lore that 
London continues to be, just as it always was, 
in latitude 51 3o / 48" N., longitude o° $' 38" 
W., while the observatory of Paris contentedly 
sits in latitude 48 5o / 12" N. and longitude 
2° 20' 12\" E. from the observatory of Green- 
wich ! This disgracefully stationary condition of 
the science cannot much longer be permitted." 

"And how," said the baron, "will it be 
changed?" and he poked the fire to conceal a 
yawn. Excellent man ! his time latterly had 
been more given to the investigation of opera 
than of the exact sciences. 

" Through my theory of Progression and Pro- 
portion in geographical statistics, by which the 
sources of the Nile can be easily determined 
from the volume and speed of that current, 
while the height of the mountains on the far 
side of the moon will be but a pleasing sum in 
Ratio for a scholar's vacations. Nor will any- 
thing content me, my dear Hohenfels, till this 
somewhat theoretical method of traveling is 
displaced by bodily progression ; till these easy 
excursions of the mind are supplemented by 
material extensions ; till the foot is pressed where 
the brain has leaped; and till I, then for the 
first time a traveler, stand behind the lunar rim, 
among the ' silent silver lights and darks un- 
dreamed of !' " 

" I am unable to appreciate your divagations," 
humbly observed Hohenfels, "though I always 
thought your language beautiful. Meantime, 
my hat is spoiled in coming hither, and you 
have the effrontery to write bucolics to me during 
the most frightful weather of the year. Once 
for all, do you refuse me an urn — " 

He did not finish his sentence. A world of 
sunshine burst like a bomb into the chamber, 
and our eyes were dazzled with the splendor : a 
sturdy beam shot directly into the fireplace, and 
the embers turned haggard and gray, and quick- 
ly retired from the unequal contest. I opened 
the window. A warm air, faint with the scent 
of earth and turf, invaded the apartment, and 
the map-like patches of dampness on the as- 
phaltum pavement were rapidly and visibly 
drying away. 

" I'm off!" said Hohenfels, with a rapid move- 
ment of retreat. 

"But you are forgetting your — " 

" What, my gloves ?" lunar \ \ \ 

"No, the umbrella." And I presented him the heaviest and longest and oldest 
of my collection. He laughed : it was a hoary canopy which we had used be- 
side the Neckar and in Heidelberg — "a pleasant town." as the old song says, 




i6 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




THE SILVER RIM. 



" when it has done raining." We sealed 
a compact over the indestructible Ger- 
man umbrella. I agreed to defer for a 
fortnight my departure for Marly : on 
his side he made a solemn vow to come 
there on the first of May, and there re- 
ceive in full and without wincing the 
particulars of my Progressive Geography. 
As he passed by the window I took care 
that he should catch a glimpse of me 
seated by accident in a strong light, my 
smoking-cap crowded down to my spec- 
tacles, and my nose buried in my old 
geographers. 

For the next few days the weather sup- 
ported the side of Hohenfels. It scatter- 
ed rain, sunshine and spits of snow. At 
last the sun got the upper hand and re- 
mained master. The wisterias tumbled 
their cataracts of blue blossoms down 
the spouts ; rare flowers, of minute pro- 
portions, burst from the button-holes of 
the young horsemen going to the Bois ; 
the gloves of the American colony be- 
came lilac ; hyacinths, daffodils and 
pansies moved by wagon-loads over the 




A THEORETICAL GEOGRAPHER. 



streets and soared to the windows 
of the sewing-girls. Overhead, in 
the steaming and cloud - marbled 
blue, stood the April sun. " Apelles 
of the flowers," as an old English 
writer has styled him, he was col- 
oring the garden - beds with his 
rarest enamels, and spreading a 
sheet of varied tints over the steps 
| of the Madeleine, where they hold 
the horticultural market. 

This sort of country ecstasy, this 
season at once stim- 
ulating and enervat- 
ing, tortured me. It 
disturbed my bibli- 
ophilist labors, and 
gave a twang of 
musty nausea even 
to the sweet scent of 
old binding-leather. 
I was as a man 
caught in the pangs 
of removing, unat- 
tached to either 
home ; and I bent 
from my windows 
over the throngs of 
festal promenaders, 
taciturn and uneasy. 
I fancied that wings 
were sprouting from 
my brown dressing- 
robe, and that they 
were the volatile 
wings of the moth 
or dragon-fly. But 
to establish myself 
at Marly before the baron, would not 
that be a breach of compact? 
Would he not make it a casus 
\^d>^ belli? Luckily, we were get- 
y : f ting through April : to-morrow 
it would be the twenty-eighth. 

On that memorable morning 
the sun rose strong and bright, 
and photographed a brilliant 
idea upon my cerebellum. 

I would undertake a pedes- 
trian attack upon Marly by 
winding my way around the 
suburbs of the capital. What 
more appropriate, for a pro- 
found geographer and tourist, 




THE NEW HYPERION. 



17 



than to measure with my walking-stick I 
that enormous bed of gypsum, at the 




INCREDULITY. 

centre of which, like a bee in a sugar- 
basin, Paris sits and hums ? 

The notion gained upon me. Per- 
haps it was the natural reaction from the 
Mountains of the Moon ; but in my then 
state of mind no prospect could appear 
more delicious than a long tramp among 
the quiet scenes through which the city 
fringes itself off into rurality. Those 
suburbs of blank convent walls ! those 
curves of the Seine and the Marne, 
blocked with low villages, whose walls 
of white, stained with tender mould and 
tiled with brown, dipped their placid re- 
flections into the stream ! those droll 
square boats, pushing out from the 
sedges to urge you across the ferry ! 
those long rafts of lumber, following, 
like cunning crocodiles, the ins and outs 
of the shallow Seine ! those banks of 
pollard willows, where girls in white caps 
tended flocks of geese and turkeys, and 
where, every silver - spangled morning, 
the shore was a landscape by Corot, and 
every twilight a landscape 
by Daubigny! How ex- 
quisite these pictures be- 
came to my mind as I 
thought them forth one by 
one, leaning over a grimy 
pavement in the peculiar 
sultriness of the year's first 
warmth ! 

" Quick, Charles ! my tin 
botany-box." 

I could be at Marly on 
the first of May at the din- 
ner hour as punctually as 
Hohenfels — before him, 
2 



maybe. And after what a range of de- 
licious experience ! How he would envy 
me ! 

" Is monsieur going to travel all alone ?" 
said keen old Charles, taking the alarm 
in a minute. " Why am I not to go along 
with monsieur?" 

The accent of primitive fidelity was 
perfect. I observed casually, " I am go- 
ing on a little journey of thirty-six hours, 
and alone. You can pack everything 
up, and go on to Marly as usual. You 
may go to-morrow." 

" Shall I not go along with monsieur, 
then?" repeated Charles, with a turn 
for tautology not now for the first time 
manifested. 

" What for ? Am I a child ?" 

"Surely not — on the contrary. But, 
though Monsieur Paul has a sure foot 
and a good eye, and is not to say getting 
old, yet when a person is fifty it is not 
best for a person to run about the streets 
as if a person was a young person." 

It was Josephine who did me the hon- 
or to address me the last remark. 

I confess to but forty-five years of age ; 
Hohenfels, quite erroneously, gives me 
forty - eight ; Josephine, with that raw 
alacrity in leaping at computations pe- 
culiar to the illiterate, oppressed me with 
fifty. Which of us three knew best ? I 
should like to ask. But it is of little 
consequence. The Easterns generally 
vaunt themselves on not knowing the 
day of their birth. And wisdom comes 
to us from the East. 

I decided, for reasons sufficient to my- 
self, to get out of Paris by the opposite 




i8 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



side. I determined to make my sortie by 
way of the Temple Market and the Belle- 
ville abattoirs. On the thirtieth of April, 




FAREWELL ! 

at an ambitiously early hour, wearing 
my gardening cap, with my sketch-book 
sticking out of my pocket, my tin box 
in one hand and my stout stick in the 
other, I emerged among the staring 
porters of the neighboring houses, and 
it was in this equipment that I received 
the renewed lamentations of Charles 
and Josephine. 

"Will you dare to go along the Boule- 
vard looking like that, sir?" said Jo- 
sephine. 

" A gentleman in a cap ! They'll take 
you for a bricklayer — indeed they will, 



sir," said Charles; "or rather for a 
milkman, with his tin can. I can't 
stand that : I will carry it rather myself, 
though I feel my rheumatics on these 
damp pavements." 

" Monsieur Paul must take a cab — at 
least to the barrier : it will not be pleas- 
ant to make a scandal in the street." 

"Who will tend Monsieur Paul these 
two days, now ?" This was uttered with 
manly grief by Charles. 

"And whoever will cook for him along 
the road ?" It was Josephine who asked 
the question. with a heavy sigh. 

To make an end of this charming 
scene of Old Virginia faithfulness, I put 
my best leg out and departed with gym- 
nastic sprightliness. An instant after I 
turned my head. 

Charles and Josephine were fixed on 
the doorstep, following me with their 
regards, and I believed I saw a tear in 
the left eye of each. What fidelity ! 1 
smiled in a sort of indulgent and baro- 
nial manner, but I felt touched by their 
sensibility. 

Come on ! It is but a twenty - four 
hours' separation. 

Go forth, then, as I remember saying 
long ago, without fear and with a manly 
heart, to meet the dim and shadowy 
Future. 





X^J^RT XX. 



THE TWO CHICKENS 




THE FLOWERS OF ,VAR. 



" r I ^HOU art no less a man because 
J- thou wearest no hauberk nor mail 
sark, and goest not on horseback after 
foolish adventures." 

So I said, reassuring myself, thirty 
years ago, when, as Paul Flemming the 
Blond, I was meditating the courageous 
change of cutting off my soap -locks, 
burning my edition of Bulwer and giving 
my satin stocks to my shoemaker : I 



mean, when I was growing up — or, in 
the more beauteous language of that day, 
when Flemming was passing into the age 
of bronze, and the flowers of Paradise 
were turning to a sword in his hands. 

Well, I say it again, and I say it with 
boldness, you can wear a tin botany- 
box as bravely as a hauberk, and fool- 
ish adventures can be pursued equally 
well on foot. 

19 



20 



THE NEW HYPERION, 



Stout, grizzled and short-winded, I am 
just as nimble as ever in the pretty ex- 
ercise of running down an illusion. Yet 
I must confess, as I passed the abattoirs 
of La Villette, whence blue - smocked 
butcher-boys were hauling loads of dirty 
sheepskins, I could not but compare my- 
self to the honest man mentioned in one 



of Sardou's comedies: "The good soul 
escaped out of a novel of Paul de Kock's, 
lost in the throng on the Boulevard 
Malesherbes, and asking the way to the 
woods of Romainville." 

Romainville ! And hereabouts its tufts 
of chestnuts should be, or were wont to 
be of old. I am in the grimy quarter of 




THE INVADERS OF ROMAINVILLE. 



Belleville. Scene of factories, of steam- 
works and tall bleak mansions as it is 
to-day, Belleville was once a jolly coun- 
try village, separated on its hilltop from 
Paris, which basked at its feet like a city 
millionaire sprawling before the check 
apron and leather shoes of a rustic beau- 
ty. Inhabited by its little circle of a few 
thousand souls, it looked around itself 
on its eminence, seeing the vast diorama 
of the city on one side, and on the other 
the Pres-Saint-Gervais* and the woods 
of Romainville waving off to the horizon 
their diminishing crests of green. A 
jolly old tavern, the He d'Amour, hung 
out its colored lamps among the trees, 
and the orchestra sounded, and the feet 
of gay young lovers, who now are skele- 
tons, beat the floor. The street was a 
bower of lilacs, and opposite the He 
d'Amour was the village church. 

Then the workmen of the Paris sub- 
urbs were invaders : they besieged the 
village on Sundays in daring swarms, to 
be beaten back successfully by the du- 
ties of every successive Monday. Now 
they are fixed there. They are the col- 
orless inhabitants of these many-storied 
houses. The town's long holiday is over. 
Where the odorous avenues of lilacs 



stretched along, affording bouquets for 
maman and the children and toothpicks 
for ferocious young warriors from the 
garrisons, are odious lengths of wall. 
Everything is changed, and from the 
gardens the grisettes of Alfred de Musset 
are with sighing sent. Their haunts are 
laboratories now, and the He d'Amour 
is a mayor's office. 

I, to whom the beer-scandals of the 
Rhine and the students' holidays of the 
Seine were among the Childe-Harold 
enormities of a not over-sinful youth, 
was sadly disappointed. Thinking of 
the groves of an Eden, I ran against 
the furnaces of a Pandemonium. For a 
stroll back toward my adolescence, Belle- 
ville was a bad beginning. I deter- 
mined to console myself with the green 
meadows of Saint-Gervais and the pretty 
woods of Romainville. Attaining the 
latter was half an hour's affair among 
long walls and melancholy houses : at 
Saint-Gervais, a double file of walls and 
houses — at Romainville, houses and 
walls again. In the latter, where for- 
merly there were scarcely three watches 
distributed amongst the whole village, 
I was incensed to find the shop of a 
clockmaker : it was somewhat consoling, 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



21 



though, to find it a clockmaker's of the 
most pronounced suburban kind, with 
pairs of wooden shoes amongst the 
guard-chains in the window, and pots 
of golden mustard ranged alternately 
with the antiquated silver turnips. 

Before the church I found yet stand- 
ing a knotty little elder tree, a bewitched- 
looking vegetable. A beadle in a blouse, 
engaged in washing one of the large 
altar-candles with soap and water at the 
public pump, gave me the following his- 
tory of the elder tree. I am passionate- 
ly fond of legends, and this is one quite 
hot and fresh, only a hundred years old. 
Hear the tale of the elder of Romain- 
ville. 

The excellent cure of Romainville in 
the last century was a man of such a 
charitable nature that his all was in the 
hands of the poor. The grocer of the 
village, a potentate of terrific powers 
and inexorable temper, finally refused 
to trust him with the supply of oil neces- 
sary for the lamp in the sanctuary. Soon 
the sacred flame sputtered, palpitated, 
flapped miserably over the crusted wick : 
the cure, responsible before Heaven for 
the life of his lamp, tottered away from 
the altar with groans of anguish. Ar- 
rived in the garden, he threw himself 
on his knees, crying Med cidfta, and 
beating his bosom. The garden con- 
tained only medicinal plants, shaded 
by a linden and an elder : completely 
desperate, the unhappy priest fixed his 
moist eyes on the latter, when lo ! the 
bark opened, the trunk parted, and a 
jet of clear aromatic liquid spouted forth, 
quite different from any sap yielded by 
elder before. It was oil. A miracle ! 

The report spread. The grocer came 
and humbly visited the priest in his gar- 
den, his haughty hat, crammed with 
bills enough to have spread agony 
through all the cottages of Romainville, 
humbly carried between his legs. He 
came proposing a little speculation. In 
exchange for a single spigot to be in- 
serted in the tree, and the hydraulic 
rights going with the same, he offered 
all the bounties dearest to the priestly 
heart — unlimited milk and honey, livers 
of fat geese and pies lined with rabbit. 



The priest, though hungry — hungry with 
the demoniac hunger of a fat and 
paunchy man — turned his back on the 
tempter. 

One day a salad, the abstemious rel- 
ish yielded by his garden herbs, was set 










STORY OF AN OLD MAN AND AN ELDER. 

on the table by Jeanneton. At the first 
mouthful the good cure made a terrible 
face — the salad tasted of lamp-oil. The 
unhappy girl had filled a cruet with the 
sacred fluid. From that day the bark 
closed and the flow ceased. 

There is one of the best oil-stories you 
ever heard, and one of the most recent 
of attested miracles. For my part, I am 
half sorry it is so well attested, and that 
I have the authority of that beadle in 
the blouse, who took my little two-franc 




MERCHANDISE IN THE TEMPLE. 

piece with an expression of much intel- 
ligence. I love the Legend. 

The environs of Paris are but chary of 
Legend. I treasure this specimen, then, 



22 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



as if it had been a rare flower for my 
botany-box. 

But the botany-box indeed, how heavy 
it was growing ! The umbrella, how 
awkward ! The sun, how vigorous and 
ardent ! Who ever supposed it could 




■5 ^ /-Ti^r~ Ji!i!^i. 

FATHER JOLIET. 

become so hot by half-past eight in the 
morning ? 

Certainly the ruthless box, which 
seemed to have taken root on my back, 
was heavier than it used to be. Had 
its rotundity developed, like its mas- 
ter's ? I stopped and gathered a flower, 
meaning to analyze it at my next rest- 
ing-place. I opened my box : then in- 
deed I perceived the secret of its weight- 
iness. It revealed three small rolls of 
oatmeal toasted, a little roast chicken, 
a bit of ham, some mustard in a cleaned- 
out inkstand ! This now was the treach- 
ery of Josephine. Josephine, who never 
had the least sympathy for my botanical 
researches, and who had small compre- 



hension of the nobler hungers and thirsts 
of the scientific soul, had taken it on her 
to convert my box into a portable meat- 
safe ! 

Bless the old meddler, how I thanked 
her for her treason ! The aspect of the 
chicken, in its blistered and varnished 
brown skin, reminded me that I was 
clamorously hungry. Shade of Apicius ! 
is it lawful for civilized mortals to be so 
hungry as I was at eight or nine in the 
morning ? 

At last I saw the end of that dusty, 
featureless street which stretches from 
the barrier to the extremity of Romain- 
ville. I saw spreading before me a 
broad plain, a kind of desert, where, 
by carefully keeping my eyes straight 
ahead, I could avoid the sight of all 
houses, walls, human constructions what- 
ever. 

My favorite traveler, the celebrated 
Le Vaillant, to whom I am indebted for 
so many facts and data toward my great 
theory of Comparative Geography, says 
that in first reaching the solitudes of 
Caffraria he felt himself elated with an 
unknown joy. No traced road was be- 
fore him to dictate his pathway — no city 
shaded him with its towers : his fortune 
depended on his own unaided instincts. 

I felt the same delight, the same lib- 
erty. Something like the heavy strap 
of a slave seemed to break behind me 
as I found myself quite clear of the 
metropolis. Mad schemes of unantici- 
pated journeys danced through my head ; 
I might amble on to Villemonble, Mont- 
fermeil, Raincy, or even to the Forest 
of Bondy, so dear to the experimental 
botanist. Had I not two days before 
me ere my compact with Hohenfels at 
Marly ? And in two days you can go 
from Paris to Florence. Meantime, from 
the effects of famine, my ribs were sink- 
ing down upon the pelvic basin of my 
frame. 

The walk, the open air, the sight of 
the fowl, whose beak now burned into 
my bosom's core, had sharpened my 
appetite beyond bearing. Yet how could 
I eat without some drop of cider or soft 
white wine to drink ? Besides, slave of 
convention that I have grown, I no 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



23 



longer understand the business of eating 
without its concomitants — a shelter and 
something to sit on. 

The plain became wearisome. There 
are two things the American-born, how- 
ever long a resident abroad, never for- 
gives the lack of in Europe. The first 
1 miss when I am in Paris : it is the 
perpetual street-mending of an Amer- 
ican town. Here the boulevards, 
smeared with asphaltum or bedded . 
with crunched macadam, attain 
smoothness without life : you travel 
on scum. But in the dear old Amer- 
ican streets the epidermis is vital : 
what strength and mutual reliance in 
the cobbles as they stand together in 
serried ranks, like so many eye-teeth ! 
How they are perpetually sinking into 
prodigious ruts, along which the pon- 
derous drays are forced to dance on 
one wheel in a paroxysm of agony and 
critical equipoise ! But the perpetual 
state of street-mending, that is the crown- 
ing interest. What would I not some- 
times give to exchange the Swiss sweep- 
ing-girls, plying their long brooms deso- 
lately in the mud, for the paviors' ham- 
mers of America, which play upon the 
pebbles like a carillon of muffled bells ? 
As for the other lack, it is the want of 
wooden bridges. Far away in my na- 
tive meadows gleams the silver Charles : 
the tramp of horses' hoofs comes to my 
ear from the timbers of the bridge. 
Here, with a pelt and a scramble your 
bridge is crossed : nothing addresses the 
heart from its stony causeway. But the 
low, arched tubes of wood that span the 
streams of my native land are so many 
bass-viols, sending out mellow thunders 
with every passing wagon to blend with 
the rustling stream and the sighing 
woods. Shall I never hear them again ? 

A reminiscence more than ten years 
old came to give precision to my ram- 
blings in the past. Beyond the rustic 
pathway I was now following I could 
perceive the hills of Trou-Vassou. Here- 
abouts, if memory served me, I might 
find a welcome, almost a home, and the 
clasp of cordial if humble hands. Here 
I might find folks who would laugh 
when I arrived, and would be glad to 



share their luncheon with me But — ten 
years gone by ! 

This computation chilled my hopes. 
What family remains ten years in a spot 
— above all, a spot on that fluctuating 
periphery of Paris, where the mighty 




THE TWO CHICKENS. 

capital, year after year, bursts belt after 
belt ? Where might they have gone ? 
Francine ! — Francine must be twenty- 
two. Married, of course. Her husband, 
no doubt, has dragged her off to some 
other department. Her parents have 
followed. March, volunteer, and dis- 
entangle yourself from these profitless 
speculations ! 

Ten minutes farther on, in the shade 
of the fort at Noisy-le-Sec, I saw a red 
gable and the sign of a tavern. As a 
tourist I have a passion for a cabaret: 
in practice , I find 
Vefours to unite per- 
haps a greater num- 
ber of advantages. 

Some soldiers of 
the Fortieth were 
drinking and laugh- 
ing in a corner. I 
took a table not far 
off, and drew my 
cold victuals out of 
my box of japanned 
tin, which they doubt- 
less took for a new 
form of canteen. The red-fisted garcon, 
without waiting for orders, set up before 
me, like ten-pins, a castor in wood with 
two enormous bottles, and a litre of that 
rinsing of the vats which, under the 




" ■) 



LOVE LEFT ALONE. 



24 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



name "wine of the country," is so dis- 
tressingly similar in every neighborhood. 
Resigned to anything, I was about draw- 
ing out my slice of ham, the chicken 
seeming to me just there somewhat too 
proud a bird and out of harmony with 
the local color, when my glance met 



two gray eyes regarding my own in the 
highest state of expansion. The lashes, 
the brows, the hair and the necklace of 
short beard were all very thick and 
quite gray. The face they garnished 
was that of the tavern-keeper. 

"Why, it is you, after all, Father Jo- 




liet !" I said, after a rapid inspection of 
his figure. 

"Ah, it is Monsieur Flemming, the 
Americain - flamand !" cried the host, 
striking one hand into the other at the 




P& M : IP!! 






Huyin 



THE WIFE. 



imminent risk of breaking his pipe. In 
a trice he trundled off my bottle of rins- 
ings, and replaced it by one of claret 
with an orange seal, set another glass, 
md posted himself in front of me. 



I asked the waiter for two plates, and 
with a slight blush evoked the chicken 
from my box. The soldiers of the For- 
tieth opened a battery of staring and 
hungry eyes. 

"And how came you here?" asked I 
of Joliet. 

" It is I who am at the head of the 
hotel," he replied, proudly pointing out 
the dimensions of the place by spreading 
his hands. "My old establishment has 
sunk into the fosses of the fort : it was a 
transaction between the government and 
myself." 

"And was the transaction a good one 
for you ?" 

"Not so bad, not so bad," said he, 
winking his honest gray eyes with a 
world of simple cunning. " It cannot be 
so very bad, since I owe nothing on the 
hotel, and the cellar is full, and I am 
selling wholesale and retail." 

The vanity which a minute since had 
expanded his hands now got into his 
legs, and set them upright under his 
body. He stood u*pon them, his eyes 
proudly lowered upon the seal of the 
claret. A pang of envy actually cross- 
ed my mind. I, simple rentier, with my 
two little establishments pressing more 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



25 



closely upon my resources with every 
year's increase of house-rates, how could 
I look at this glorious small freeholder 
without comparisons ? 

"So, then, Father Joliet," said I, "you 
are rich ?" 



"At least I depend no longer on my 
horse, and that thanks to you and the 
government." 

" To me ! What do you mean ?" 
"Why, have you forgotten the two 
I chickens?" 




THE LONE CRUSADE. 



At the allusion to the chickens we 
caught each other's eye, and laughed 
like a pair of augurs. But the myste- 




TENDEK CHAKITY. 

rious fowls shall be explained to the 
reader. 

I need not explain that I have cast 
my lot with the Colonial Americans of 
Paris, and taken their color. It is a 
sweet and luxurious mode of life. The 
cooks send round our dinners quite hot, 
or we have faultless servants, recom- 
mended from one colonist to another : 
these capital creatures sometimes be- 
come so thoroughly translated into Amer- 
ican that I have known them shift around 



from flat to flat in colonized households 
of the second and third stories without 
ever touching French soil for the best 
part of a lifetime. At our receptions, 
dancing -teas and so on we pass our 
time in not giving offence. Federals 
and Confederates, rich cotton-spinners 
from Rhode Island and farmers from 
thousand-acre granges in the West, are 
obliged to mingle and please each other. 
Naturally, we can have no more polit- 
ical opinions than a looking-glass. We 
entertain just such views as Galignani 
gives us every morning, harmonized 
with paste from a dozen newspapers. 




NECESSITY KNOWING LAW. 



Our grand national effort, I may say, 
the common principle that binds us to- 
gether as a Colony, is to forget that we 
are Americans. We accordingly give 
our whole intellects to the task of ap- 



26 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



pearing like Europeans : our women 
succeed in this particularly well. Miss 
Yuba Sequoia Smith, whose father made 
a fortune in water-rights, is now afraid 
to walk a single block without the at- 
tendance of a chambermaid in a white 
cap, though she came up from Cali- 



fornia quite alone by the old Panama 
route. Everybody agrees that our ladies 
dress well. Shall I soon forget how 
proud Mrs. Aquila Jones was when a 
gentleman of the emperor's body-guard 
j took her for Marguerite Bellanger in the 
I Bois ? Our men, not having the culture 




THE FERRY. 



of costume to attend to, are perhaps a 
little in want of a stand-point. Still, we 
can play billiards in the Grand Hotel 
and buy fans at the Palais Royal. We 
go out to Saint-Cloud on horseback, we 
meet at the minister's; and I contend 
that there was something conciliatory 




JOVE S THUNDER. 

and national in a Southern colonel offer- 
ing to take Bigelow to see Menken at the 
Gaite, or when I saw some West Point- 
ers and a nephew of Beauregard's light- 
ing the pipe of peace at a handsome to- 
bacconist's in the Rue Saint- Honore. 
The consciousness that we have no 
longer a nationality, and that nobody 
respects us, adds a singular calm, an 
elevation, to our views. Composed as 
our cherished little society is of crumbs 



from every table under heaven, we have 
succeeded in forming a way of life where 
the crusty fortitude and integrity of pa- 
triotism is unnecessary. Our circle is 
like the green palace of the magpies in 
Musset's Merle Blanc, and like them 
we live"de plaisir, d'honneur, de ba- 
vardage, de gloire et de chiffons." 

I confess that there was a period, be- 
tween the fresh alacrity of a stranger's 
reception in the Colony and the settled 
habits I have now fallen into, when I 
was rather uneasy. A society of migra- 
tors, a system woven upon shooting par- 
ticles, like a rainbow on the rain, was odd. 
Residents of some permanency, like my- 
self, were constantly forming eternal 
friendships with people who wrote to 
them in a month or two from Egypt. In 
this way a quantity of my friendships 
were miserably lacerated, until I learn- 
ed by practice just how much friendship 
to give. At this period I was much oc- 
cupied with vain conciliations, conces- 
sions and the reconciling of inconsist- 
encies. A brave American from the 
South, an ardent disciple of Calhoun, 
was a powerful advocate of State Rights, 
and advocated them so well that I was 
almost convinced; when it appeared 
one day that the right of States to in- 
dividual action was to cease in cases 
where a living chattel was to escape 
from the South to the North. In this 
case the State, in violation of its own 



THE NEW HYPERION, 



27 



laws unrecognizant of that kind of own- 
ership, was to account for the property 
and give it back, in obedience to gen- 




eral Congressional order and to the most 
advanced principles of Centralization. 
Before I had digested this pill another 
was administered to me in that small 
English section of our circle which gave 
us much pride and an occasional son- 
in-law. This was by no less a person 
than my dear old friend Berkley, now 
grown a ruddy sexagenarian, but still 
given to eating breakfast in his bath-tub. 
The wealthy Englishman, who had got 
rich by exporting chinaware, was sound 
on the subject of free commerce between 
nations. That any industry, no matter 
how young might be the nation prac- 
ticing it, or how peculiar the difficulties 



of its prosecution, should ever be the 
subject of home protection, he stamped 
as a fallacy too absurd to be argued. 
The journals venturing such an 
opinion were childish drivelers, 
putting forth views long since ex- 
ploded before the whole world. 
He was still loud in this opinion 
> when his little book of epigrams, 
5 The Raven of Zurich and Other 
i~$ Rhymes, came out, and being 
gg bright and saucy was reprinted in 
America. The knowledge that he 
could not tax on a foreign soil his 
own ideas, the plastic pottery of 
his brain, was quite too much for 
his mental balance, and he took 
to inveighing against free trade in 
literary manufactures without the 
slightest perception of inconsist- 
ency, and with all the warmth, if not 
the eloquence, of Mr. Dickens on the 
same theme. The gradual accumula- 
tion of subjects like these — subjects taboo 
in gentle society — soon made it apparent 
that in a Colony of such diverse colors, 
where every man had a sore spot or a 
grievance, and even the Cinderellas had 
corns in their little slippers, harmony 
could only be obtained by keeping to 
general considerations of honor, nobil- 
ity, glory, and the politics of Beloochis- 
tan ; on which points we all could agree, 
and where Mr. Berkley's witty eloquence 
was a wonder. 

It is to my uneasy period, when I was 




ON WITH THE DANCE 



sick with private griefs and giddy with 
striving to reconcile incompatibilities, 
that the episode of the Chickens be- 
longs. I was looking dissatisfied out 
of one of my windows. Hohenfels, dis- 
appointed of a promenade by an after- 
noon shower, was looking dissatisfied 
out of the other. Two or three people, 



waiting for four o'clock lunch, were 
lounging about. I had just remarked, 
I believe, that I was a melancholy man, 
for ever drinking "the sweet wormwood 
of my sorrows." A dark phantom, like 
that of Adamastor, stood up between me 
and the stars. 
"Nonsense, you in grate !" responded 



28 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



the baron from his niche, " you are only 
too happy. You are now in the precise 




ENDYMION. 



position to define my old conception of 
the Lucky Dog. The Lucky Dog, you 
know, in my vocabulary, is he who, free 
from all domestic cares, saunters up and 
down his room in gown and slippers, 
drums on the window of a rainy after- 



noon, and, as he stirs his evening fire, 
snaps his fingers at the world, saying, 
' I have no wife nor children, good 
|& or bad, to provide for.' " 

I replied that I did not willingly 
give way to grief, but that the main- 
spring of my life was broken. 

" Did you ever try," spoke up a 
buxom lady from a sofa — it was the 
Frau Kranich, widow of the Frank- 
fort banker, the same who used to 
give balls while her husband was 
drugged to sleep with opium, and 
now for a long time in Paris for 
some interminable settlement with 
Nathan Rothschild — "Did you ever 
try the tonic of a good action ? / 
never did, but they actually say it re- 
juvenates one considerably." 

I avowed that I had more faith in the 
study of Geography. Nevertheless, to 
oblige her, I would follow any sugges- 
tion. 




>'■ o- 



HOW THE MODERN DOG TREATS LAZARUS. 



" Benefit the next person who applies 
to you." 

"Madame, I will obey." 

At this moment a wagon of singular 
appearance drew up before my windows. 
I knew it well enough : it was the ve- 
hicle of a handy, convenient man who 
came along every other morning to pick 
up odd jobs from me and my neighbors. 
He could tinker, carpenter, mend har- 
ness : his wife, seated in the wagon by 
his side, was good at a button, or could 
descend and help Josephine with her 
ironing. A visit at this hour, however, 
was unprecedented. 

As Charles was beginning a conver- 
sation under the hood of the wagon, I 



opened the window. " Come into the 
room," I said. 

Hohenfels maliciously opened his. 
" Come in," he added — " Monsieur Flem- 
ming is especially anxious to do you a 
benefit." 

The man, uncovering, was now stand- 
ing in the little garden before the house 
— a man with a face at once intelligent 
and candid, which is unfortunately rare 
among the poor rascals of his grade. 
Although still young, he was growing 
gray : his blouse, patched and re-sewed 
at all the seams, was clean and whole. 
Poverty had tested him, but had as yet 
picked no flaws in him. By this time 
my windows were alive with faces. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



29 



The man, humble but not awkward, 
made two or three respectful bows. 
" Monsieur," he said to me, " I hope you 
are fond of chickens. I am desirous to 
sell you a fine pair." 

Chickens for me! and what was it 
supposed I should do with them ? At 




THE LAUGHING LACKEY. 

this point the voice of the Frau Kranich 
was heard, clear and malicious : " It is a 
bargain : bring them in." 

At the same time the canvas cover of 
the wagon puffed outward, giving issue 
to a heavy sigh. 

The man went to a sort of great cage 
in lattice-work occupying the back of 
the vehicle. Then he backed his wagon 
up to the sidewalk, and we saw, sitting 
on the cage and framed by the oval of 
the wagon-cover, a young woman of ex- 
cellent features, but sadly pale. She 
now held the two chickens in her lap, 
caressing them, laying their heads 
against her cheek, and enwreathing 
them in the folds of her great shawl. I 
could only close the bargain with the 
utmost speed, to be safe from ridicule. 

"Your price?" I asked. 

"Fix it yourself, sir," said the man, 
determined to confuse me. " You are 
doubtless thoroughly acquainted with 
poultry." 

"The nankeen - colored one," spoke 
up again the bell-like and inexorable 
voice from the other window, "is a yel- 
low Crevecceur, very well formed and 



lively-looking : the slate-colored one is 
a Cochin-China, with only a few of the 
white feathers lacking from the head. 
They are chef-d'ceuvres, and are worth 
fully forty francs apiece." 

" Only look, sir, at their claws and 
bills, see their tongues, and observe un- 
der their wings : they are young, whole- 
some and of fine strain — " 

He was running on when I stopped 
him : " Here are a hundred francs for 
you, brave man." 

The patchwork blouse cut a caper, a 
look of lively joy shot from the man's 
eyes, where a tear was gathering, and 
the wagon, from its bursting cover, gave 
utterance to a sob. 

"Why sell them," I asked, touched in 
spite of myself, "if you are so attached 
to them ? Is the money indispensable 
to you ? I might possibly make an ad- 
vance." 

"Ah, you are a real Christian — you 
are now," said the honest Joliet, polish- 
ing his eyeball with his coat-cuff. " The 
good woman holds by them, it is true. 
Holy Virgin ! it's she that has raised 
them, and I may say brooded over them 
in the coop. The eggs were for our 







THE PRESENT. 

salad when we had nothing better than 
nettles and sorrel. But, day in and 
night in, we have no other lodging than 
our wagon, and the wife is promising to 
give me a dolly .; and if we don't take 
out the cage, where will the cradle go, 
sir?" 



3° 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



The calculation appeared reasonable. 
I received the birds, and they were the 
heroes, in their boudoir under the piano, 
of that night's conversazione. 

How hard it is for a life cast upon the 
crowded shores of the Old World to re- 
gain the place once lost is shown by the 
history of my honest friend Joliet. Born 



in 1812, of an excellent family living 
twenty miles from Versailles, the little 
fellow lost his mother before he could 
talk to her. When he was ten years old, 
his father, who had failed after some 
land speculations, and had turned all he 
had into money, tossed him up to the 
lintel of the doorway, kissed him, put 




THE CONVALESCENT. 



a twenty-franc gold-piece into his little j 
pocket, and went away to seek his for- 
tune in Louisiana : the son never heard 
of him more. The lady-president of a 
charitable society, Mademoiselle Marx, 
took pity on the abandoned child : she 
fed him on bones and occasionally beat 
him. She was an ingenious and in- 
ventive creature, and made her own 
cat-o'-nine-tails : an inventor is for ever 
demonstrating the merits of his imple- 
ment. Soon, discovering that he was 
thankless and unteachable, she made 
him enter, as youngest clerk, the law- 
office of her admirer and attorney, Con- 
stabule. This gentleman, not finding 
enough engrossing - work to keep the 



lad out of mischief, allowed him 
sweep his rooms and blacken his 
^oots. Little Joliet, after giving a 
volatile air to a great many of his 
employer's briefs by making paper 
chickens of them, showed his im- 
perfect sense of the favors done 
him by absconding. In fact, proud 
and independent, he was brooding 
over boyish schemes of an honor- 
able living and a hasty fortune. 
He soon found that every profession 
required an apprenticeship, and 
that an apprenticeship could only be 



to 



bought for 'money. He was obliged, 
then, to seek his grand fortune through 
somewhat obscure avenues. If I were 
to follow my poor Joliet through all his 
transmigrations and metempsychoses, as 
I have learned them by his hints, allu- 
sions and confessions, I should show him 
by turns working a rope ferry, where the 
stupid and indolent cattle, whose business 
it is to draw men, were drawn by him ; 
then letter-carrier ; supernumerary and 
call-boy in a village theatre ; road-mend- 
er on a vicinal route ; then a beadle, a 
bell-ringer, and a sub-teacher in an in- 
fant school, where he distributed his own 
ignorance impartially amongst his little 
patrons at the end of a stick ; after this, 
big drum in the New Year's festivals, 




THE DIVIDED BURDEN. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



31 



and ready at a moment's opportunity to 
throw down the drumstick and plunge 
among the dancers, for Joliet was a well- 
hinged lad, and the blood of nineteen 
years was tingling in his heels. After 
fluttering thus from branch to branch, 
like the poor birdling that cannot take 
its flight, discouraged by his wretched 
attempts at life, he plunged straight be- 
fore him, hoping for nothing but a turn 
of luck, driving over the roads and fields, 
lending a hand to the farmers, sleeping 
in stables and garrets, or oftener in the 
open air ; sometimes charitably sheltered 
in a kind man's barn, and perhaps — oh 
bliss ! — honestly employed with him for 
a week or two ; at others rudely repulsed 




SHARE MY CUP. 

as a good-for-nothing and vagabond. 
Vagabond ! That truly was his profes- 
sion now. He forgot the charms of a 
fixed abode. He came to like his gypsy 
freedom, the open air and complete in- 



dependence. He laughed at his misery, 

provided it shifted its place occasionally. 

One day, when Hazard, his ungener- 




. -J*. 



BREAKING STONES. 



ous guardian, seemed to have quite for- 
gotten him, he walked — on an empty 
stomach, as the doctors say — past the 
lofty walls of a chateau. A card was 
placed at the gate calling for additional 
hands at a job of digging. Each work- 
man, it was promised, had a right to a 
plate of soup before beginning. This 
article tempted him. At the gate a 
lackey, laughing in his face, told him 
the notice had been posted there six 
months : workmen were no longer want- 
ed. "Wait, though," said the servant, 
and in another minute gave the appli- 
cant a horse ! — a real, live horse in blood 
and bones, but in bones especially. 




SICKNESS AND COURTSHIP. 



3 2 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



"There," said the domestic, "set a beg- 
gar on horseback and see him ride to 
the devil !" And, laughing with that 
unalloyed enjoyment which one's own 
wit alone produces, he retired behind 
his wicket. 

The horse thus vicariously fulfilling 
the functions of a plate of soup was a 
wretched glandered beast — not old, but 
shunned on account of the contagious 
nature of his disease. Having received 
the order to take him to be killed at the 



abattoir, monsieur the valet, having bet- 
ter things to do, gave the commission to 
Joliet, with all its perquisites. 

Joliet did not kill the steed : he cured 
it. He tended it, he drenched it, he 
saved it. By what remedy ? I cannot 
tell. I have never been a farrier, though 
Joliet himself made me perforce a poul- 
terer. Many a bit of knowledge is pick- 
ed up by those who travel the great 
roads. The sharp Bohemian, by play- 
ing at all trades, brushing against gentry 




THE WAGON. 



of all sorts and scouring all neighbor- 
hoods, becomes at length a living cyclo- 
paedia. 

Joliet, like Democritus and Plato, saw 
everything with his own eyes, learned 
everything at first hand. He was a 
keen observer, and in our interviews 
subsequent to the affair of the chickens 
I was more than once surprised by the 
extent of his information and the subtle- 
ty of his insight. His wits were tacked 
on to a number of remote supports. In 
our day, when each science has become 
so complicated, so obese, that a man's 
lifetime may be spent in exercising round 
one of them, there are hardly any gen- 
eralizes or observers fit to estimate their 
relativity, except among the two classes 
called by the world idlers and ignorants 
— the poets and the Bohemians. 



Joliet, now having joined the ranks of 
the cavalry, found his account in his 
new dignity. He became an orderly, a 
messenger. He carried parcels, he trans- 
ported straw and hay. If the burden was 
too heavy for the poor convalescent, the 
man took his own portion with a good 
grace, and the two mutually aided each 
other on the errand. Thanks to his 
horse, the void left by his failure to learn 
a trade was filled up by a daily and reg- 
ular task : what was better, an affection 
had crept into his heart. He loved his 
charge, and his charge loved him. 

This great hotel, the world, seemed to 
be promising entertainment then for both 
man and beast, when an epoch of dis- 
aster came along — a season of cholera. 
In the villages where Joliet's business 
lay the doors just beginning to be hos- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



33 



pitable were promptly shut against him. | nized Assistance in his person, they now 
Where the good townsmen had recog- | saw Contagion. 




DINNER-TIME ! 



If he had been a single man, he could 
have lain back and waited for better 
times. But he now had two mouths to 
feed. He kissed his horse and took a 
resolution. 

He had never been a mendicant. 
"Beggars don't go as hungry as I have 
gone," said he. "But what will you 
have ? Nobility obliges. My father 
was a gentleman. I have broken stones, 
but never the devoirs of my order." 

He left the groups of villages among 
which his new industry had lain. The 
cholera was behind him : trouble, beg- 
gary perhaps, was before him. As night 
was coming on, Joliet, listlessly leading 
his horse, which he was too considerate 
to ride, saw upon the road a woman 
whom' he took in the obscurity for a 
farmer's wife of the better class or a 
decent villager. For an introduction 
the opportunity was favorable enough. 
On her side, the quasi farmer's wife, 
seeing in the dusk an honest fellow 
dragging a horse, took him for a "gen- 
tleman's gentleman" at the least, and 
the two accosted each other with that 
easy facility of which the French people 
3 



have the secret. Each presented the 
other with a hand and a frank smile. 

Joliet, whom I have erred perhaps in 
comparing to Democritus, was never- 
theless a laugher and a philosopher. 
But his grand ha-ha ! usually infectious, 
was not shared on this occasion. The 
wanderer could not show much merri- 
ment. A sewing-woman with a capacity 
for embroidery, her needle had given 




THE NEW HYPERION. 



her support, but now a sudden warning 
of paralysis, and symptoms of cholera 
added to that, had driven her almost to 




A LITTLE VISITOR. 



despair. She was without home, friend 
or profession. 

Joliet set her incontinently on horse- 
back, and walked by her side to a good 
village cure's two miles off — the same 
who had assisted him to his first com- 
munion, and for whom he subsequent- 
ly became a beadle. The kind priest 
opened his arms to the man, his heart 
to the woman, his stable to the horse. 
For his second patient my Bohemian 
set in motion all his stock of curative 
ideas. In a month she was well, and 
the cure no longer had three pensioners, 
for of two of them he made one. 

Two poverties added may make a 
competence. Monsieur and Madame 
Joliet were good and willing. The man 
began to wear a strange not unbecoming 
air of solidity and good morals. The 
girls now saluted him respectfully when 
he passed through a village. 

One thing, however, in the midst of 
his proud honeymoon perplexed him 
much. Hardly married, and over head 
and ears in love, he knew not how to 
invite his bride to some wretched gar- 
ret, himself deserting her to resume his 
former life in the open air. To give up 
the latter seemed like losing existence 
itself. 

One morning, as he asked himself the 
difficult question, a pair of old wheels at 
the door of a cartwright seemed of their 
own accord to resolve his perplexity. 
He bought them, the payment to be 
made in labor : for a week he blew the 



wheelwright's bellows. The wheels were 
his own : to make a wagon was now the 
affair of a few old boards and a gypsy's 
inventiveness. 

Thus was conceived that famous es- 
tablishment where, for several years, 
lived the independent monarch and his 
spouse, rolling over the roads, circulating 
through the whole belt of villages around 
Paris, and carrying in their ambulant 
home, like the Cossacks, their utensils, 
their bed, their oven, their all. 

From town to town they carried pack- 
ages, boxes and articles of barter. At 
dinner-time the van was rolled under a 
tree. The lady of the house kindled a 
fire in the portable stove behind a hedge 
or in a ditch. The hen-coop was opened, 
and the sage seraglio with their sultan 




FKANCINE. 



prudently pecked about for food. At the 
first appeal they re-entered their cage. 

At the same appeal came flying up 
the dog of the establishment, a most 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



35 



piteous-looking griffin, disheveled, moult- 
ed, staring out of one eye, lame and 
wild. For devotion and good sense his 
match could be found nowhere. Like 
his horse, his wife, his house and the 
pins in his sleeve, Joliet had picked the 
collie up on the road. 

The arrival of a tiny visitor to the Bo- 



hemian's address made a change neces- 
sary. Little Francine's dowry was pro- 
vided by my humorous acquisition of 
the yellow and slate-colored chickens. 

With his savings and my banknote 
Joliet determined to have a fixed resi- 
dence. He succeeded of course. The 
walls, the windows, the doors, every- 




don't wring my heart!' 



thing but the garden-patch, he picked 
up along the roads. 

Buried in eglantine and honeysuckle, 
soon no one would suspect the home- 
made character of Joliet's chateau. It 
became the Centre of my botanizing ex- 
cursions. Francine grew into a fair, 
slim girl, like the sweetest and most in- 
nocent of Gavarni's sketches, and sold 
flowers to the passers-by. 

Such were the souvenirs I had of this 
brave tavern-keeper in his old capacity 
of roadster and tramp. Now, after an 
hiatus of years, I found him before me 
in a different character at the beginning 
of my roundabout trips to Marly. 

But what had become of my favorite 
little rose- merchant ? 



"Francine?" asked Joliet briskly, as 
if he was wondering whom I could mean 
by such a name. "You mean my wife ? 
Poor thing ! She is dead." 

"I am speaking of your daughter, Fa- 
ther Joliet." 

"Oh, my daughter, my girl Francine ? 
She went to live with her godmother. 
It was ten years ago." 

"And you have not seen her since ?" 

" Yes — yes — two years back. She has 
gone again." 

" To her godmother ?" 

"No." 

"Why so?" 

"Her godmother would not receive 
her. Don't wring my heart so, sir !" 




IF.AJR/I? III- 



THE FEAST OF SAINT ATHANASIUS. 




THE PAULISTS. 



AS I parted from my stout old friend 
Joliet, I saw him turn to empty the 
last half of our bottle into the glasses of 
a couple of tired soldiers who were suck- 
ing their pipes on a bench. And again 
the old proverb of Aretino came into 
my head: "Truly all courtesy and good 
manners come from taverns." I grasp- 
ed my botany-box and pursued my prom- 
enade toward Noisy. 

The village of Noisy has made (with- 
out a pun) some noise in history. One 
of its ancient lords, Enguerrand de Ma- 
rigny, was the inventor of the famous 
gibbet of Montfaucjon, and in the poetic 
justice which should ever govern such 
cases he came to be hung on his own 
36 



gallows. He was convicted of manifold 
extortions, and launched by the common 
executioner into that eternity whither he 
could carry none of his ill-gotten gains 
with him. Here, at least, we succeed 
in meeting a guillotine which catches 
its maker. By a singular coincidence 
another lord of Noisy, Cardinal Balue, 
underwent a long detention in an iron- 
barred cage — one of those famous cages, 
so much favored by Louis XL, of which 
the cardinal, as we learn from the rec- 
ords of the time, had the patent-right 
for invention, or at least improvement. 
Once firmly engaged in his own torture 
— while his friend Haraucourt, bishop 
of Verdun, experienced a like penalty in 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



37 



a similar box, and the foxy old king 
paced his narrow oratory in the Bastile 
tower overhead — we may be sure that 
Balue gave his inventive mind no more 




THE REWARD OF AN INVENTOR. 

to the task of fortifying his cages, but 
rather to that of opening them. 

These ugly reminiscences were not so 
much the cause of a prejudice I took 
against Noisy, as caused by it. At Noisy 
I was in the full domain of my ancient 
foe the railway, where two lines of the 
Eastern road separate — the Ligne de 
Meaux and the Ligne de Mulhouse. 
The sight of the unhappy second-class 
passengers powdered with dust, and of 
the frantic nurses who had mistaken 




CARDINAL BALUE. 



their line, and who madly endeavored 
to leap across to the other train, stirred 
all my bile. It was on this current of 
thought that the nobleman who had 



been hung and the caidinal who had 
pined in a cage were borne upon my mem- 
ory. "Small choice," said I, "whether 
the bars are perpendicular or horizontal. 
You lose your independence about equal- 
ly by either monopoly." 

I crossed the Canal de l'Ourcq, and 
watched it stretching like a steel tape to 
meet the Canal Saint - Denis and the 
Canal Saint-Martin in the great basin at 
La Villette — a construction which, fin- 
ished in 1809, was the making of La 
Villette as a commercial and industrial 
entrepot. I meant to walk to Bondy, 
and after a botanic stroll in its beauti- 
ful forest to retrace my steps, gaining 
Marly next day by Baubigny, Auber- 
villiers and Nanterre. "The Aladdins 




AN UNCIVIL ENGINEER. 



of our time," I said as I leaned over 
the soft gray water, "are the engineers. 
They rub their theodolites, and there 
springs up, not a palace, but a town." 

"Who speaks of engineers?" said a 
strong baritone voice as a weighty hand 
fell on my shoulder. "Are you hereto 
take the train at Noisy ?" 

" Let the train go to Jericho ! I am 
trying, on the contrary, to get away from 
it." 

" Do you mean, then, to go on foot to 
Epernay ?" 

" What do you mean, £pernay ?" 

"Why, have you forgotten the feast 
of Saint Athanasius ?" 

"What do you mean, Athanasius?" 

The baritone belonged to one of my 



3* 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



friends, an engineer from Boston. He 
had an American commission to inspect 
the canals of Europe on the part of a 



-%.-.. 




LOCOMONIAC POSSESSION. 



company formed to buy out the Sound 
line of steamers and dig a ship-canal 
from Boston to Providence. The en- 
gineer had made his inspection the ex- 
cuse for a few years of not disagreeable 
travel, during which time the company 
had exploded, its chief financier having 
cut his throat when his peculations came 
out to the public. 

"Are you trying, then, to escape from 
one of your greatest possible duties and 
one of your greatest possible pleasures ? 
You have the remarkable fortune to 



possess a friend named Athanasius ; you 
have in addition, the strange fate to be 
his godfather by secondary baptism ; 
and you would, after these un- 
paralleled chances, be the sole 
renegade from the vow which 
you have extracted from the 
others." 

The words were uncivil and 
rude, the hand was on my 
shoulder like a vise ; but there 
floated into my head a recollec- 
tion of one of the pleasantest 
evenings I have ever enjoyed. 
We were dining with James 
Grandstone, one of my young 
friends. I have some friends of 
whom I might be the father, and doubt 
not I could find a support for my practice 
in Sir Thomas Browne or Jeremy Taylor 
if I had time to look up the quotation. 
We dined in the little restaurant Ober, 
near the Odeon, with a small party of 
medical students, to which order Grand- 
stone's friends mostly belonged. We 
were all young that night; and truly I 
hold that the affectionate confusion of 
two or three different generations adds 
a charm to friendship. 

At dessert the conversation happened 




LE EA1NCY I THE CHATEAU. 



to strike upon Christian names. I at- 
tacked the cognomens in ordinary use, 
maintaining that their historic signif- 
icance was lost, their religious sentiment 
forgotten, their euphony mostly ques- 



tionable. Alfred, Henry and William 
no longer carried the thoughts back to 
the English kings — Joseph and Reuben 
were powerless to remind us of the 
mighty family of Israel. 



THE NEW HYPERION, 



39 



" I have no complaint to make of my 
own name," I protested, "which has been 
praised by Dannecker the sculptor. That 
was at Wurtemberg, gentlemen. ' You 
are from America,' the old man said to 




CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX. 



me, ' but you have a German name : 
Paul Flemming was one of our old 
poets.' The thought has been a pleas- 
ant one to me, though I have not the 
faintest idea what my ancient godparent 
wrote. But in the matter of originality 
my Christian name of Paul certainly 
leaves much to desire." 

I was gay enough that evening, and 
in the vein for a paradox. I set up the 
various Pauls of our acquaintance, and 
maintained that in any company of fifty 
persons, if a feminine voice were to call 
out "Paul!" through the doorway, six 
husbands at least would start and say, 
" Coming, dear !" I computed the Pauls 
belonging to one of the grand nations, 
and proved that an army recruited from 
them would be large enough to carry on 
a war against a power of the second order. 



"If the Jameses were to reinforce the 
| Pauls," I declared, looking toward my 
i young host, " Russia itself would tremble. 
j — Are you to make your start in life 
I with no better name ?" I asked him 
maliciously. "Must you be for 
ever kept in mediocrity by an ad- 
dress that is not the designation 
of an individual, but of a whole 
nation ? Could you not have 
been called by something rather 
less oecumenical ?" 

"You may style me by what 
title you please, Mr. Flemming," 
said Grandstone nonchalantly. 
" I am to enter a great New York 
wine-house after a little examina- 
tion of the grape-country here. 
Doubtless a Grandstone will have, 
by any other name, a bouquet as 
sweet." 

The idea took. An almanac 
of saints' days, which is often 
printed in combination with the 
menu of a restaurant, was lying 
on the table. Beginning at the 
letter A, the name of Ambrose 
was within an ace of being cho- 
sen, but Grandstone protested 
against it as too short, and Atha- 
nasius was the first of five sylla- 
bles that presented. Our engi- 
neering friend, who was present, 
had in his pocket a vial of water 
from the Dardanelles, which fouls ships' 
bottoms ; and with that classic liquid 
the baptism was effected by myself, the 
bottle being broken on poor Grandstone's 
crown as on the prow of a ship. 

"You are no longer James to us, but 
Athanasius," I said. "If you remain 
moderately virtuous, we will canonize 
you. Meantime, let us vow to meet on 
the next canonical day of Saint Athana- 
sius and hold a love-feast." 

We drank his health, and glorified 
him, and laughed, and the next day I 
forgot whether Grandstone was called 
Athanasius or Epaminondas. And my 
confusion on the subject had not clari- 
fied in the least up to the rude reminder 
given by my engineer. 

"I had quite forgotten my engage- 
ment," I confessed. "Besides, Grand- 



40 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



stone is living now, as you remind me, 
at Epernay — that is to say, at seventy 
or eighty miles' distance." 

"Say three hours," he retorted: "on 
a railway line we don't count by miles. 
But are you really not here at Noisy to 
satisfy your promise and report yourself 
for the feast of Saint Athanasius ? If 
you are not bound for Epernay, where 
are you bound ?" 

" I am off for Marly." 

" You are going in just the contrary 



direction, old fellow. You can be at 
Epernay sooner." 

"And Hohenfels joins me at Marly 
to-morrow," I continued, rather help- 
lessly ; " and Josephine my cook is there 
this afternoon boiling the mutton-hams." 

" Fine arguments, truly ! You shall 
sleep to-night in Paris, or even at Marly, 
if you see fit. I have often heard you 
argue against railroads — a fine argument 
for a geographer to uphold against an 
engineer ! Now is the instant to bury 




your prejudice. Do you see that soft 
ringlet of smoke off yonder ? It is the 
message of the locomotive, offering to 
reconcile your engagements with Grand- 
stone and Hohenfels. Come, get your 
ticket!" 

And his hand ceased squeezing my 
shoulder like a pincer to beat it like a 
mallet. A rapid sketch of the situation 
was mapped out in my head. I could 
reach Epernay by five o'clock, returning 
at eight, and, notwithstanding this little 
lasso flung over the champagne-coun- 
try, I could resume my promenade and 
modify in no respect my original plan ; 
and I could say to Hohenfels, "My boy, 
I have popped a few corks with the 
widow Cliquot." 

Such was my vision. The gnomes of 



the railway, having once got me in their 
grasp, disposed of me as they liked, and 
quite unexpectedly. 

From the car-window, as in a pano- 
rama of Banvard's, the landscape spun 
out before my eyes. Le Raincy, which 
I had intended to visit at all events on 
the same day, but afoot, offered me the 
roofs of its ancient chateau, a pile built 
in the most pompous spirit of the Re- 
naissance, and whose alternately round 
and square pavilions, tipped with steep 
mansards, I was fain to people with 
throngs of gay visitors in the costume of 
the grand siecle. Then came the cathe- 
dral of Meaux, before which I reverently 
took off my cap to salute the great Bos- 
suet — "Eagle of Meaux," as they justly 
called him, and on the whole a noble 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



4i 



bird, notwithstanding that he sang his 
Te Deum over some exceedingly ques- 
tionable battle-grounds. Then there 
presented itself a monument at which 
my engineering friend clapped his hands. 
It was a crown of buildings with extin- 



- ^lCr%7_ 




CHUKCH-DOOR, EPERNAY. 

guisher roofs encircling the brow of a 
hill, and presenting the antique appear- 
ance of some chastel of the Middle 
Ages. 

" Do you see those round, pot-bellied 
towers, like tuns of wine stood upon 
end?" he said — "those donjons at the 
corners, tapering at the top, and present- 
ing the very image of noble bottles ? 
There needs nothing but that palace to 
convince you that you have arrived in 
the champagne region." 

"I do not know the building," I con- 
fessed. 

" Can you not guess ? Ah, but you 
should see it in a summer storm, when 
the rain foams and spirts down those 
huge bottles of mason-work, and the 
thunder pops among the roofs like the 
corks of a whole basket of champagne ! 
That fine castle, Flemming, is the cha- 
teau of Boursault, apparently built in 
the era of the Crusades, but really a 
marvel of yesterday. It rose into being, 
not to the sound of a lyre, like the towers 
of Troy, but at the bursting of innu- 
merable bottles, causing to resound all 



over the world the name of the widow 
Cliquot." 

At length we entered the station of 
Epernay. There I received my first 
shock in learning that the only return- 
train stopping at Noisy was one which 
left at midnight, and would land me in 
the extreme suburbs of Paris at three 
o'clock in the morning. 

Our friend Grandstone, whom we 
found amazing the streets of Epernay 
with a light American buggy drawn by 
a colossal Norman horse, received us 
with still more surprise than delight. 
He had relapsed into plain James, and 
had never dreamed that his second bap- 
tism would bear fruit. Besides, he proved 
to us that we were in error as to the date. 
The feast of Saint Athanasius, as he 
showed from a calendar shoved beneath 
a quantity of vintners' cards on his 
study-table, fell on the second of May, 
and could not be celebrated before the 
evening of the first. It was now the 
thirtieth of April. He invited us, then, 
for the next day at dinner, warning us 
at the same time that the evening of 
that same morrow would see him on his 
way to the Falls of Schaff hausen. This 
idea of dining with an absentee puzzled 
me. 




THE BEGGAR WHO DRANK CHAMPAGNE. 

We both laughed heartily at the en- 
gineer's mistake of twenty-four hours, 
and he for his part made me his excuses. 

Athanasius — whose name I obstinate- 
ly keep, because it gives him, as I main- 



42 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



tain, a more distinct individuality, — 
Athanasius happened to be driving out 
for the purpose of collecting some friends 
whom he was about to accompany to 
Schaffhausen, and whom he had invited 
to dinner. He contrived to stow away 
two in his buggy, and the rest assembled 
in his chambers. We dined gayly and 
voraciously, and I hardly regretted even 
that old hotel-dinner at Interlaken, when 
the landlord waited on us in his green 
coat, and when Mary Ashburton was by 
my side, and when I praised hotel-din- 
ners because one can say so much there 
without being overheard. 

Dinner over, we went out for a stroll 
through the town. The city of Epernay 
offers little remarkable except its Rue du 
Commerce, flanked with enormous build- 
ings, and its church, conspicuous only 
for a flourishing portal in the style of 
Louis XIV., in perfect contradiction to 
the general architecture of the old sanc- 
tuary. The 
environs 
were little 
note worthy 
at the sea- 
son, for a 
vineyard- 
land has this 
peculiarity — its veritable spring, its pride 
of May, arrives in the autumn. 

One very vinous trait we found, how- 
ever, in the person of a beggar. He 
was sitting on Grandstone's steps as we 
emerged. Aged hardly fourteen, he had 
turned his young nose toward the rich 
fumes coming up from the kitchen with 
a look of sensuality and indulgence that 
amused me. The maid, on a hint of 
mine, gave him a biscuit and the re- 
mainders of our bottles emptied into a 
bowl. A smile of extreme breadth and 
intelligence spread over his face. Open- 
ing his bag, he laid by the biscuit, and 
extracted a morsel of iced cake : at the 
same time he produced an old-fashioned, 
long-waisted champagne-glass, nicked 
at the rim and quite without a stand. 
Filling this from his bowl, he drank to 
the health of the waitress with the easiest 
politeness it was ever my lot to see. 
Ragged as a beggar of Murillo's, cour- 




ADMIKATION. 



teous as a hidalgo by Velasquez, he 
added a grace and an epicurism com- 
pletely French. I thought him the best 
possible figure - head for that opulent 




MAC MEURTKIEK. 



spot, cradle of the hilarity of the world. 
I gave him five francs. 

We proceeded to admire the town. 
The great curiosities of Epernay, its 
glory and pomp, are not permitted to 
see the daylight. They are subterranean 
and introverted. They are the cellars. 



ii?i;iiP^Ui vl; 




THE BLACK POMINO. 



Those rich colonnades of Commerce 
street, all those porticoes surmounted 
with Greek or Roman triangles in the 
nature of pediments, of what antique 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



43 



religion are they the representations? 
They are cellar-doors. 

It was impossible to quit the city with- 
out visiting its cellars, said Grandstone, 
and we betook ourselves under his 
guidance to one of the most renowned. 




TAM O SHANTER S RIDE. 



[ only thought of seeing a battle-field 
of bottles, but I found the Eleusinian 
mysteries. 

In the temple-porch of Eleusis was 
fixed a large pale face, in the middle 
parts of which a red nose was glowing 
like a fuse. Several other personages, 
in company with this visage, received us 
on our approach with a world of solemn 
and terrifying signals. 

Directly a man in a cloak and slouch- 
ed hat, and holding in his hands a wire 
fencing-mask, extinguished with it the 
red nose. The latter met his fate with 
stolid fortitude. All were perfectly still, 
but the twitching cheeks of most of the 
spectators betrayed a laugh retained 
with difficulty. The cloak then ad- 
vanced, like a less beautiful Norma, to 
a bell in the portico, and struck three 
tragical strokes. A strong, pealing deep 
voice came from the interior: "Who 
dares knock at this door?" 



"A night-bird," said the man in the 
| cloak, who took the part of spokesman. 
"What has the night-bird to do with 
the eagle ?" replied the strong voice. 
" What can there be in common between 
the heathen in his blindness and the 
Ancient of the 
Mountain throned 
in power and splen- 
dor?" 

"Grand Master, 
it is in that splen- 
dor the new-comer 
wishes to plunge." 
After this imita- 
tion of some Ma- 
sonic mystery the 
red-nosed man was 
quickly taken by 
the shoulders and 
hurtled in at the 
door, where a flare 
of red theatrical fire 
illuminated his sud- 
den plunge. 

"What nonsense 
is this ?" I said to 
Athanasius. 

"The man in the 
iron mask," he ex- 
plained, "is in that 
respect what we shall all be in a min- 
ute. Without such a protector, in pass- 
ing amongst the first year's bottles we 
might receive a few hits in the face." 

"And do you know the new appren- 
tice ?" 

"No: some stranger, evidently." 

" It is not hard to guess his extrac- 







THE CKOOKI.D MAN. 



44 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



tion," said one of our dinner-party. " In 
the East there are sorcerers with two 
pupils in each eye. For his part, he 
seems to be braced with two pans in 
each knee. He is long in the stilts like 
a heron, square - headed and square- 
shouldered : I give you my word he is a 



Scotchman. For certain," he added, " I 
have seen his likeness somewhere — Ah 
yes, in an engraving of Hogarth's !" 

The author of this charitable criticism 
was a little crooked gentleman, at whose 
side I had dined — a man of sharpness 
and wit, for which his hunch gave him 




THE GRAVITY ROAD. 



the authority. As we penetrated finally 
into the immense crypt, long like a 
street, provided with iron railways for 
handling the stores, and threaded now 
and then by heavy wagons and Nor- 
mandy horses, my interest in the sur- 
rounding wonders was distracted by ap- 
prehensions of the fate awaiting the un- 
fortunate red nose. 

The gallop of a steed was heard at 
length, then a dreadful exploding noise. 
I should have thought that a hundred 
drummers were marching through the 
catacombs. 

Relieved of his mask, fixed like a dry 
forked stick, wrong side foremost, on a 
frightened steed which galloped down 
the avenue, and pursued by the racket 
of empty bottles beaten against the 
wine-frames, came the Scotchman, like 
an unwilling Tarn O'Shanter. At a 
new outburst of resonant noises, which 
we could not help offering to the general 
confusion, the horse stopped, and as- 
sumed twice or thrice the attitude of a 



gymnast who walks on his hands. The 
figure of the man, still rigid, flew up 
into the air like a stick that pops out of 
the water. The Terrible Brothers re- 
ceived him in their arms. 

Hardly restored to equilibrium, the 
patient was quickly replaced in the sad- 
dle, but the saddle was this time girded 
upon a barrel, and the barrel placed 
upon a truck, and the truck upon an 
inclined tramway. His impassive coun- 
tenance might be seen to kindle with in- 
dignation and horror, as the hat which 
had been jammed over his eyes flew 
off, and he found himself gliding over 
an iron road at a rate of speed contin- 
ually increasing. 

He was fated to other tests, but at this 
point a little discussion arose among 
ourselves. Grandstone, his fluffy young 
whiskers quite disheveled with laughter, 
said, " Fellows, we had better stop some- 
where. There will be more of this, and 
it will be tedious to see in the role of un- 
invited spectators, and it is not certain 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



45 



we are wanted. I always knew there 
was a Society of Pure Illumination at 
Epernay. It is not a Masonic order, 
but it has its signs, its passes, its grips, 
and in a word its secret. I have recog- 
nized among these gentlemen some active 
members of the order — among others, 
notwithstanding his disguise, a jolly good 
fellow we have here, Fortnoye." 

"You cannot have seen Fortnoye," 
said one of the party : "he is at Paris." 

"And who is your Fortnoye, pray ?" I 
asked. 

"The best tenor voice in Epernay; 
but his presence here does not give me 
an invitation, you see. The Society of 
Pure Illumination has its rites and mys- 



teries more important than everybody 
supposes, and probably complicated with 
board-of-trade secrets among the wine- 
merchants. We have hit upon a bad 
time. Let us go and visit another cel- 
lar." 

There was opposition to this measure : 
different opinions were expressed, and I 
was chosen for moderator. 

" My dear boys," I said, "as the gray- 
est among you I may be presumed to be 
the wisest. But I do not feel myself to 
be myself. I have received to-day a 
succession of unaccustomed influences 
I have been dragged about by an im- 
pertinent locomotive ; I have been in- 
duced to dine heavily ; I have absorbed 




THE ANIMATED CELLS. 



champagne, perhaps to the limit of my 
measure. These are not my ordinary 
ways : I am naturally thoughtful, studi- 
ous and pensive. The Past, gentlemen, 
is for me an un faded morning-glory, 
whose closed cup I can coax open at 
pleasure, and read within its tube legends 
written in dusted gold. But the Present 
to the true philosopher is also — In fact, 
I never was so much amused in my life. 
I am dying to see what they will do with 
that Scotchman." 

Athanasius submitted. At the end of 
one of the cross galleries we could al- 
ready see a flickering glimmer of torches. 
There, evidently, was held the council. 
We stole on tiptoe in that direction, and 
ensconced ourselves behind a long file of 
empty bottle-shelves, worn out after long 
service and leaning against a wall. 

Through the holes which had fixed 
the bottles in position we could see ev- 



erything without being discovered. The 
grand dignitaries, sitting in a semicircle, 
were about to proceed from physical to 
moral tests. Before them, his red nose 
hanging like a cameo from the white 
bandage which covered his eyes, and 
relieved upon his face, still perfectly 
white and calm, stood the Scot. The 
Grand Master arose — I should have said 
the Reverend — his head nodding with 
senility, his beard white as a waterfall : 
he appeared to be eighty years of age at 
least. He was truly venerable to look 
at, and reminded me of Thor. He wore 
a sort of dalmatica embroidered with 
gold. Calmness and goodness were so 
plainly marked on the aspect of this 
worthy that I felt ashamed of playing 
the spy, and felt inclined to return hum- 
bly to the good counsel of Athanasius, 
when the latter, pushing my elbow be- 
hind the shelves, said, referring to the 



46 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



Ancient of the Mountain, "That's Fort- 
noye : I knew I couldn't be mistaken." 

I was greatly mystified at discovering 
the first tenor voice of Epernay in an 
aged man ; but the catechism now com- 
mencing, I thought only of listening. 

"The barleycorns of your native 
North having been partially cleaned out 
of your hair by contact with the two en- 
chanted steeds — the steed you bridled 
without a head, and the steed that ran 
away with you without legs," said the 
Ancient — " we have brought you hither 
for examination. We might have gone 
much farther with the physical tests : we 
might have forced you, at the present 
session, to relieve yourself of those en- 
velopes considered indispensable by all 
Europeans beneath your own latitude, 
and in our presence perform the sword- 
dance." 

" So be it," said the disciple, executing 
a galvanic figure with his legs, his 
countenance still like marble. 

"If we demanded the head of 
your best friend, would you bring 
it in?" 

" I am the countryman of Lady 
Macbeth," replied the red nose. 
"Give me the daggers." 

" We would fain dispense with 
that proof, necessarily painful to 
a man of such evident sensibility 
as yours." The red nose bowed. 
" What is your name ?" 

He pronounced it — apparently 
MacMurtagh. 

"In future, among us, you are named 
Meurtrier." 

" MacMeurtrier," muttered the Scotch- 
man in a tone of abstraction. 

" No ! Meurtrier unadulterated. Your 
business ?" 

"I am a homoeopathic doctor." 

"Are you a believer in homoeopathy ? 
Be careful : remember that the Ancient 
of the Mountain hears what you say." 

The Scot held up his hand : " I be- 
lieve in the learned Hahnemann, and in 
Mrs. Hahnemann, no less learned than 
himself; but," he added, "homoeopathy 
is a science still in its baby-clothes. I 
have invented a system perfectly novel. 
In mingling homoeopathy with vegetable 



magnetism the most encouraging results 
are obtained, as may be observed daily 
in the villa of Dr. Mac Murtagh, near 
Edinburgh — " 

"Enough!" cried the Ancient: "cir- 
culars are not allowed here. Forget 
nothing, Meurtrier ! And how were you 
inspired with the pious ambition of be- 
coming our brother?" 

"At the hotel table : it was the young 
clerks from the wine-houses. I men- 
tioned that I wished to be a Free Mason, 
and the lodge of Epernay — " 

"Silence ! The words you use, lodge 
and Free Mason, are most improper in 
this temple, which is that of the Pure 
Illumination, and nothing less. Will 
you remember, Meurtrier?" 

"MacMeurtrier," muttered the novice 
again. The last proofs were now tried 
upon him, called the " five senses." For 
that of hearing he was made to listen to 




THE TRAVELER 



a jewsharp, which he calmly proclaimed 
to be the bagpipe ; for that of touch, he 
was made to feel by turns a live fish, a 
hot iron and a little stuffed hedgehog. 
The last he took for a pack of toothpicks, 
and announced gravely, "It sticks me." 
The laughs broke out from all sides, 
even from behind the bottle-shelves. 

Alas ! on this occasion the laugh was 
not altogether on my side of that fatal 
honeycomb ! 

They had made him swallow, in a 
glass, some fearful mixture or other, and 
he had imperturbably declared that it 
was in his opinion the wine of Moet : 
after this evidence of taste the proof of 
sight was to follow, and the semicircle 



THE NE W HYPERION. 



47 



of purple faces was quite blackening I for departure was come, and I had not 

with bottled laughter, when Grandstone a minute to spare. 

touched me on the shoulder. My hour | Apparently, the last test of the red 




PALACE AT STRASBURG. 



nose resulted in a triumph : as we were 
effecting our covert and hasty retreat we 
heard all the voices exclaim in concert, 
"It is the Pure Illumination !" 

Gay as we were on entering the great 
wine-cellar, we were perfectly Olympian 
when we came out. The crypts of these 
vast establishments, where a soft inspi- 
ration perpetually floats upward from 
the wine in store, often receive a visitor 
as a Diogenes and dismiss him as an 
Anacreon. 

Our consumption of wine at dinner had 
been, like Mr. Poe's conversation with 
his soul, " serious and sober." In the cel- 
lar no drop had passed our mouths. I was 
alert as a lark when I entered : I came 
out in a species of voluptuous dream. 

All the band conducted me to the 
railway-station, and I was very much 
touched with the attention. It was who 
should carry my botany-box, who should 
set my cap straight, who should give me 
the most precise and statistical informa- 
tion about the train which returned to 
Paris, with a stop at Noisy ; the while, 
Ophelia-like, I chanted snatches of old 



songs, and mingled together in a tender 
reverie my recollections of Mary Ash- 
burton, my coming Book and my theories 
of Progressive Geography. 

" Take this shawl : the night will be 
chilly before you get to the city." 

" Don't let them carry you beyond 
Noisy." 

" Come back to Epernay every May- 
day : never forget the feast of Saint 
Athanasius." 

" Be sure you get into the right train : 
here is the car. Come, man, bundle up ! 
they are closing the barrier." 

I was perfectly melted by so much 
sympathy. "Adieu," I said, "my dear 
champanions — " 

I turned into an excellent car, first 
class, and fell asleep directly. 

Next day I awoke — at Strasburg ! The 
convivials of the evening before, making 
for the Falls of Schaffhausen on the 
Rhine, had traveled beside me in the 
adjoining car. 

My friends, uncertain how their prac- 
tical joke would be received, clustered 
around me. 



4 8 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



"Ah, boys," I said, "I have too many- 
griefs imprisoned in this aching bosom 
to be much put out by the ordinary 
' Horrid Hoax.' But you have com- 
promised my reputation. I promised 
to meet Hohenfels at Marly : children, 
bankruptcy stares me in the face." 

Grandstone had the grace to be a little 
embarrassed : "You wished to dine with 
me at the Feast of Saint Athanasius, but 
you mistook the day. Your engineer is 
the true culprit, for he voluntarily de- 
ceived you. The fact is, my dear Flem- 
ming, we have concocted a little con- 
spiracy. You are a good fellow, a joyful 
spirit in fact, when you are not in your 
hibies about the Past and the Future. 
We wanted you, we conspired ; and, Cat- 
iline having stolen you at Noisy, Cethegus 
tucked you into a car with the intention 
of making use of you at Schaffhausen." 

"Never! I have the strongest vows 
that ever man uttered not to revisit the 
Rhine. It is an affair of early youth, a 
solemn promise, a consecration. You 
have got me at Strasburg, but you will 
not carry me to Schaffhausen." 

He was so contrite that I had to con- 
sole him. Letting him know that no great 
harm was done, I saw him depart with 



his friends for Bale. For my part, I re- 
mained with the engineer, whose pro- 
fessional duties, such as they were, kept 
him for a short time in the capital of 
Alsace. In his turn, however, the latter 
took leave of me : we were to meet each 
other shortly. 

It was seven in the morning. This 
time, to be sure of my enemy the rail- 
road, I procured a printed Guide. But 
the Guide was a soiry Counselor for my 
impatience. The first train, an express, 
had left : the next, an accommodation, 
would start at a quarter to one. I had 
five hours and three-quarters to spare. 

One of the greatest pleasures in life, 
according to my poor opinion, is to 
have a recreation forced on one. Some 
cherub, perhaps, cleared the cobwebs 
away from my brain that morning ; but, 
however it might be, I was glad of ev- 
erything. I was glad the "champan- 
ions " were departed, glad I had a stolen 
morning in Strasburg, glad that Hohen- 
fels and my domestics would be uneasy 
for me at Marly. 

In such a mood I applied myself to 
extract the profit out of my detention in 
the city. 





IP-AJR/T IV. 



A DAY IN STRASBURG 




TEARING UP THE PONTOON BRIDGE. 



BEHOLD 
around 



me, then, with five hours 
my neck, like so many- 
millstones, in Strasburg, on the abjured 
Rhine ! Had I not vowed never to visit 
that bewitched current again ? Was it 
not by Rhine-bank that I learned to 
quote the minnesingers and to unctuate 
my hair ? From her owl-tower did not 
old Frau Himmelauen use to observe me, 
my cane, and my curls, and my gloves ? 
Did not her gossips compare me to Wil- 
helm Meister ? And so, when he thought 
he was ripe, the innocent Paul Flem- 
ming must needs proceed to pour his 



curls, his songs and his love into the 
lap of Mary Ashburton ; and the dis- 
creet siren responded, "You had better 
go back to Heidelberg and grow : you 
are not the Magician." 

Yet before that little disaster of my 
calf period I sighed for the Rhine : I 
used its wines more freely than was per- 
haps good for me, and when the smoke- 
colored goblet was empty would declare 
that if I were a German I should be 
proud of the grape-wreathed river too. 
At Bingen I once sat up to behold the 
bold outline of the banks crested with 

49 



;o 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



ruins, which in the morning proved to 
be a slated roof and chimneys. And 
when at Heidelberg I saw the Neckar 
open upon the broad Rhine plain like 
the mouth of a trumpet, I felt inspired, 
and built every evening on my table a 
perfect cathedral of slim, spire-shaped 
bottles — sunny pinnacles of Johannis- 
berger. 

And now, decoyed to the Rhine by a 
puerile conspiracy, how could I best get 
the small change for my five hours ? 




STKASBUKG CATHEDRAL IN FLAMES. 

Should I sulk like a bear in the parlor 
of the Maison Rouge until the departure 
of the Paris train, or should I explore the 
city ? Some wave from my fond, foolish 
past flowed over me and filled me with 
desire. I felt that I loved the Rhine and 
the Rhine cities once more. And where 
could I better retie myself to those old 
pilgrim habits than in this citadel of 
heroism, a place sanctified by recent 
woes, a city proved by its endurance 
through a siege which even that of Paris 
hardly surpassed ? One draught, then, 
from the epic Rhine ! To-morrow, at 



Marly, I could laugh over it all with 
Hohenfels. 

The Miinster was before me — the 
highest tower in Europe, if we except 
the hideous cast-iron abortion at Rouen. 
I recollected that in my younger days I 
had been defrauded of my fair share of 
tower-climbing. Hohenfels had a say- 
ing that most travelers are a sort of chil- 
dren, who need to touch all they see, 
and who will climb to every broken tooth 
of a castle they find on their way, get- 
ting a tiresome ascent and hot sunshine 
for their pains. "I trust we are wiser," 
he would observe, so unanswerably that 
I passed with him up the Rhine quite, as 
I may express it, on the ground floor. 

I marched to the cathedral, deter- 
mined to ascend, and when I saw the 
look of it changed my mind. 

The sacristan, in fact, advised me not 
to go up after he had taken my fee and 
obtained a view of my proportions over 
the tube of his key, which he pretended 
to whistle into. We sat down together 
as I recovered my breath, after which I 
wandered through the nave with my 
guide, admiring the statue of the origi- 
nal architect, who stands looking at the 
interior — a kind of Wren "circumspect- 
ing" his own monument. At high noon 
the twelve apostles come out from the 
famous horologe and take up their 
march, and chanticleer, on one of the 
summits of the clock-case, opens his 
brazen throat and crows loud enough to 
fill the farthest recesses of the church 
with his harsh alarum. 

A portly citizen was talking to the sa- 
cristan. " I hear many objections to 
that bird, sir," he remarked to me, " from 
fastidious tourists : one thinks that a pea- 
cock, spreading its jewels by mechanism, 
would have a richer effect. Another 
says that a swan, perpetually wrestling 
with its dying song, would be more poet- 
ical. Others, in the light of late events, 
would prefer a phcenix." 

The dress of the stout citizen an- 
nounced a sedentary man rather than a 
cosmopolitan. He had a shirt-front much 
hardened with starch ; a white waistcoat, 
like an alabaster carving, which pushed 
his shirt away up round his ears ; and 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



5 > 



a superb bluebottle-colored coat, with 
metal buttons. It was the costume of a 
stay-at-home, and I learned afterward 
that he was a local professor of geogra- 
phy and political science — the first by 
day, the last at night only in beer-gar- 
dens and places of resort. 




HEST SPIKE IN EUROPE 



"Nay," I said, "the barnyard bird is 
of all others the fittest for a timepiece : 
he chants the hours for the whole coun- 
try-side, and an old master of English 
song has called him Nature's ' crested 
clock.' " 

"With all deference," said the bour- 
geois, " I would still have a substitute 



provided for yonder cock. I would set 
up the Strasburg goose. Is he not our 
emblem, and is not our commerce swol- 
len by the inflation of the _/<?/<? gras ? In 
one compartment I would show him fed 
with sulphur-water to increase his bil- 
iary secretion ; another might represent 
his cage, so narrow that 
the pampered crea- 
ture cannot even turn 
round on his stomach 
for exercise ; another 
division might be ana- 
tomical, and present 
the martyr opening his 
breast, like some tor- 
tured saint, to display 
his liver, enlarged to 
the weight of three 
pounds; while the 
apex might be occur 
pied by the glorified 
gander in person, ex- 
tending his neck and 
commenting on the 
sins of the Strasburg 
pastry - cooks with a 
cutting and sardonic 
hiss." 

You have not for- 
gotten, reader, the 
legend of the old 
clock ? 

Many years ago 
there lived here an 
aged and experienced 
mechanic. Buried in 
his arts, he forgot the 
ways of the world, and 
promised his daughter 
to his gallant young 
apprentice, instead of 
to the hideous old 
magistrate who a p- 
proached the maiden 
with offers of gold and 
dignity. One day the youth and damsel 
found the unworldly artist weeping for 
joy before his completed clock, the won- 
der of the earth. Everybody came to 
see it, and the corporation bought it for 
the cathedral. The city of Bale be- 
spoke another just like it. This order 
aroused the jealousy of the authorities. 



52 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



who tried to make the mechanic promise 
that he would never repeat his master- 
piece for another town. "Heaven gave 
me not my talents to feed your vain am- 
bition," said the man of craft : " the men 
of Bale were quicker to recognize my 
skill than you were. I will make no 
such promise." Upon that the rejected 
suitor, who was among the magistrates, 
persuaded his colleagues to put out the 
artist's eyes. The old man heard his 




THE GREAT CLOCK. 



fate with lofty fortitude, and only asked 
that he might suffer the sentence in the 
presence of his darling work, to which 
he wished to give a few final strokes. 
His request was granted, and he gazed 
long at the splendid clock, setting its 
wonders in motion to count off the last 
remaining moments of his sight. " Come, 
laggard," said the persecuting magis- 
trate, who had brought a crowd of spec- 
tators, "you are taxing the patience of 



this kind audience." "Eat one touch 
remains," said the old mechanic, "to 
complete my work ;' ' and he busied him- 
self a moment among the wheels. While 
he suffered the agonies of his torture a 
fearful whir was heard from the clock : 
the weights tumbled crashing to the floor 
as his eyes fell from their sockets. He 
had removed the master-spring, and his 
revenge was complete. The lovers de- 
voted their lives to the comfort of the 
blind clockmaker, and the 
wicked magistrate was 
hooted from society. The 
clock remained a ruin until 
1 842, when parts of it were 
used in the new one con- 
structed by Schwilgue. 

I found my bluebottle 
professor to be a Swiss, 
thirty years resident in the 
city, very accessible and 
talkative, and, like every 
citizen by adoption, more 
patriotic than even the na- 
tive-born. 

" It was a cheerless time 
for me, sir," said he as we 
contemplated together the 
facade of the church, "when 
I saw that spire printed in 
black against the flames of 
the town." 

I begged frankly for his 
reminiscences. 

"The bombardment of 
1870," said the professor, 
"was begun purposely, in 
contempt of the Bonapart- 
ist tradition, on the 15th 
of August, the birthday of 
Napoleon. At half-past 
eleven at night, just as the 
fireworks are usually set off on that 
evening, a shell came hissing over the 
city and fell upon the Bank of France, 
crushing through the skylight and shiv- 
ering the whole staircase within : the 
bombardment that time lasted only half 
an hour, but it found means, after much 
killing and ruining among the private 
houses, to reach the buildings of the Ly- 
ceum, where we had placed the wounded 
from the army of Woerth. While the 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



53 



city was being touched off in every di- 
rection, like a vast brush-heap, we had 
to take these poor victims down into the 
cellars." 

" Do you think the bombs were pur- 
posely so directed?" I asked. 

"Don't talk to me of stray shots!" 
said the burgher, hotly enough. " The 
enemy was better acquainted with the 
city than we were ourselves, and his fire 
was of a precision that extorted our 
admiration more than once. Cannons 
planted in Kehl sent their shells high 
over the citadel, like blows from a friend. 
An artillery that, 3'fter the third shot, 



found the proper curve and bent the 
cross on the cathedral, cannot plead 
extenuating circumstances and stray 
shots." 

" Was the greatest damage done on 
that first night ?" 

"Ah no ! The bombardment was ad- 
dressed to us as an argument, proceed- 
ing by degrees, and always in a cre- 
scendo : after the 15th there was silence 
until the 18th; after the 18th, silence up 
to the 23d. The grand victim of the 23d, 
you know, was the city library, where 
lay the accumulations of centuries of 
patient learning — the mediaeval manu- 




CHURCH OF SAINT THOMAS. 



scripts, the Hortus deliciarum of Her- 
rade of Landsberg, the monuments of 
early printing, the collections of Sturm. 
Ah ! when we gathered around our pre- 
cious reliquary the next day and saw 
its contents in ashes, amid a scene of 
silence, of people hurrying away with 
infants and valuable objects, of firemen 
hopelessly playing on the burned mas- 
terpieces, there was one thought that 
came into every mind — one parallel ! It 
was Omar the caliph and the library of 
Alexandria." 

"And you imagine that this offence 
to civilization was quite voluntary ?" I 
argued with some doubt. 

" It is said that General Werder acted 



under superior orders. But, sir, you 
must perceive that in these discretionary 
situations there is no such dangerous 
man as the innocent executant, the mar- 
tinet, the person of routine, the soldier 
stirled in his uniform. I saw Werder 
after the capitulation. A little man, lean 
and bilious. Such was the opponent 
who reversed for us successively, like 
the premisses of an argument, the bank, 
the library, the art-museum, the theatre, 
the prefecture, the arsenal, the palace 
of justice, not to speak of our churches. 
A man like that was quite capable of 
replying, as he did, to a request that he 
would allow a safe -conduct for non- 
combatants, that ' the presence of wo- 



54 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



men and children was an element of 
weakness to the fortress of which he did 
not intend to deprive it.' The night il- 
luminated by our burning manuscripts 
was followed by the day which witness- 
ed the conflagration of the cathedral. 
Look at that noble front, sir, contem- 
plating us with the hoary firmness of six 
hundred years ! You would think it a 
sad experience to see it, as 1 have seen 
it, crowned with flames which leaped up 
and licked the spire, while the copper 
on the roof curled up like paper in the 



heat ; and to hear, as I heard, the poor 
beadles and guards, from the height of 
yonder platform, calling the city to the 
aid of its cathedral. The next day the 
mighty church, now so imperfectly re- 
stored, was a piteous sight. The flames 
had gone out for want of fuel. We 
could see the sky through holes in the 
roof. The organ-front was leaning over, 
pierced with strange gaps ; the clock 
escaped as by miracle ; and the mighty 
saints, who had been praying for centu- 
ries in the stained windows, were scat- 




"■^:T:H 



BEAUTY S QUINTESSENCE. 



tered upon the floor. On the 25th the 
systematic firing of the faubourgs began, 
and the city was filled with the choking 
smell of burning goods : on the 28th the 
citadel was kindled." 

"And what opposition," 1 naturally 
demanded, "were you able to make to 
all this ? I believe your forces were 
greatly shortened ? ' 

"We were as short as you can think, 
sir. Most of the garrison had been with- 
drawn by MacMahon. The soldiers 
still among us were miserably demoral- 



ized by the entrance of the fugitives 
from Woerth. Our defence was the 
strangest of mixtures. The custom-house 
officers were armed and mobilized : the 
naval captain Dupetit-Thouars happen- 
ed to be in the walls, with some of the 
idle marine. Colonel Fievee, with his 
pontoneers, hurriedly tore up the bridge 
of boats leading over to Kehl, and united 
himself with the garrison. From the 
outbreak of the war we civilians had 
been invited to form a garde nationale, 
but never was there a greater farce. We 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



55 



were asked to choose our own grades, 
and when I begged to be made colonel, 
they inquired if I would not prefer to be 
lieutenant or adjutant. Most of us, those 
at least who had voted against the im- 
perial candidates, never received a gun. 
Our artillery, worthy of the times of 
Louis XIV., scolded in vain from the 
ramparts against the finest cannons in 
the world, and we were obliged to watch 
the Prussian trenches pushing toward 
the town, and to hear the bullets begin- 
ning to fall where at first were only 
bombs." 

"The capitulation was then imminent." 

" There were a few incidents in the 
mean time. The deputation from Swit- 
zerland, of ever-blessed memory, enter- 
ed the city on the eleventh of September. 
Angels from heaven could not have been 
more welcome. You know that a thou- 
sand of our inhabitants passed over into 
Switzerland under conduct of the dele- 
gate from Berne, Colonel Biiren, and that 
they were received like brothers. From 
Colonel Biiren also we learned for the first 
time about Sedan, the disasters of Ba- 
zaine and MacMahon, and the hopeless- 
ness of the national cause. We learned 
that, while they were crowning with flow- 
ers the statue of our city in Paris, they had 
no assistance but handsome words to 
send us. Finally, we learned the procla- 
mation of the French republic — a repub- 
lic engendered in desolation, and so pow- 
erless to support its distant provinces ! 
We too had our little republican demon- 
stration, and on the 20th of September 
the prefect they had sent us from Paris, M. 
Valentin, came dashing in like a harle- 
quin, after running the gauntlet of a 
thousand dangers, and ripped out of his 
sleeve his official voucher from Gam- 
betta. Alas ! we were a republic for 
only a week, but that week of fettered 
freedom still dwells like an elixir in some 
of our hearts. For eight days I, a born 
Switzer, saw the Rhine a republican 
river." 

"Give me your hand, sir!" I cried, 
greatly moved. "You are talking to a 
republican. I am, or used to be, a citi- 
zen of free America!" 

"I am happy to embrace you," said 



the burgher ; and I believe he was on the 
point of doing it, literally as well as fig- 
uratively. " I, for my part, whatever 
they make of me, am at least an Alsa- 
tian. But I am half ashamed to talk to 
an American. On the 29th I went to 
see our troops evacuate the city by the 
Faubourg National. I found myself el- 
bow to elbow in the throng with the 
consul from the United States : never in 
my life shall I forget the indignant sur- 
prise of your compatriot." 

"Why should our consul be indignant 
at disaster?" I demanded. 

"Why, sir, the throng that rolled 
toward the 
grave Prus- 
sian troops 
was co m- 
posed of des- 
peradoes in- 
flamed with 
wine, flour- 
ishing broken 
guns and 
stumps of sa- 
bres, and in- 
sulting equal- 
ly, with many 
a drunken 
oath, the con- 
querors and 
our own loyal 
general U h- 
r i c h. The 
American 
consul, blush- 
in g with 
shame for our 

common humanity, said, ' This is the 
second time I have watched the capitu- 
lation of an army. The first time it 
was the soldiers of General Lee, who 
yielded to the Northern troops. Those 
brave Confederates came toward us si- 
lent and dignified, bearing arms reversed, 
as at a funeral. We respected them as 
heroes, while here — ' But I cannot re- 
peat to you, sir, what your representa- 
tive proceeded to add. That revolting 
sight," continued my informant, " was the 
last glimpse we had of France our pro- 
tector. When we returned to the city a 
Prussian band played German airs to us 




VOICI LE SAI 



56 



iHE NEW HYPERION. 



at the foot of Kleber's statue. We are 
Teutonized now. At least," concluded 
the burgher, taking me by the shoulders 
to hiss the words through my ears in a 
safe corner, "we are Germans officially. 
But I, for my part, am Alsatian for ever 
and for ever !" 

Greatly delighted to have encountered 
so near a witness and so minute a chron- 
icler of the disasters of the town, I in- 
vited the professor to accompany me in 




STREET OF THE GREAT ARCADES. 



exploring it, my interest having vastly 
increased during his recital ; but he 
pleaded business, and, shaking both my 
hands and smiling upon me out of a 
sort of moulding formed around his face 
by his shirt-collars, dismissed me. So, 
then, once more, with a hitch to my tin 
box, I became a lonely lounger. I view- 
ed the church of Saint Thomas, the 
public place named after Kleber, who 
was born here, some of the markets and 



a beer establishment. In the church of 
Saint Thomas I examined the monu- 
ment to Marshal Saxe, by Pigalle. I 
should have expected to see a simple 
statue of the hero in the act of break- 
ing a horseshoe or rolling up a silver 
plate into a bouquet-holder, according 
to the Guy-Livingstone habits in which 
he appears 10 have passed his life, and 
was more surprised than edified at sight 
of the large allegorical family with 
which the sculptor has endowed 
him. In the same church I had 
the misfortune to see in the boxes 
a pair of horrible mummies, decked 
off with robes and ornaments — a 
count of Nassau-Saarwerden and 
his daughter, according to the cus- 
todian — an unhappy pair who, hav- 
ing escaped our common doom of 
corruption by some physical aridity 
or meagreness, have been compelled 
to leave their tombs and attitudi- 
nize as works of art. In Kleber's 
I square I saw the conqueror of Heli- 
opblis, excessively pigeon-breasted, 
dangling his sabre over a cowering 
little figure of Egypt, and looking 
around in amazement at the neigh- 
boring windows : in fact, Kleber be- 
gan his career as an architect, and 
there were solecisms in the surround- 
ing structure to have turned a better 
balanced head than his. In the 
markets I saw peasants with red 
waistcoats and flat faces shaded 
with triangles of felt, and peasant- 
girls bareheaded, with a gilded ar- 
row apparently shot through their 
brains. I traversed the Street of 
the Great Arcades, and saw the 
statue of Gutenberg, of whom, as 
well as of Peter Schoffer, the natives 
seem to be proud, though they were but 
type-setters. Finally, in the Beer-hall, 
that of the dauphin, I tasted a thimble- 
ful of inimitable beer, the veritable beer 
of Strasburg. Already, at half-past eight 
on that fine May morning, I persuaded 
myself that I had seen everything, so 
painful had my feet become by pound- 
ing over the pavements. 

My friend the engineer had agreed to 
breakfast with me at the hotel. When 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



57 



I entered the dining-room with the in- 
tention of waiting for him, I found two 
individuals sitting at table. One was no 
other than the red-nosed Scotchman, the 
Eleusinian victim whom I had watched 
through the bottle-rack at £pernay. Of 
the second I recognized the architectural 
back, the handsomely rolled and faced 
blue coat and the marble volutes of his 
Ionic shirt-collar : it was my good friend 
of the cathedral. Every 
trace of his civic grief had 
disappeared, and he wore a 
beaming banquet -room air, 
though the tear of patriot- 
ism was hardly dry upon his 
cheek. 

As I paused to dispose of 
my accoutrements t h e red 
nose was saying, "Yes, my 
dear sir, since yesterday I 
am a Mason. I have the 
honor," he pursued, "to be 
First Attendant Past Grand. 
It will be a great thing for 
me at Edinburgh. Burns, 
I believe, was only Third 
Assistant, Exterior Lodge : 
the Rank, however, in his 
opinion, was but the guin- 
ea's stamp. But the ad- 
vantages of Masonry are 
met with everywhere. Al- 
ready in the train last night 
I struck the acquaintance of 
a fine fellow, a Mason like 
myself." 

" Allow me to ask," said the 
cheerful bluebottle, " how you 
knew him for a Mason like 
yourself?" 

"I'll tell you. I was unable to sleep, 
because, you see, I had to drink Moet 
for my initiation : as I am unaccustom- 
ed to anything livelier than whisky, it 
unnerved me. To pass the time I went 
softly over the signals." 

" What signals, if I may be so indis- 
creet ?" 

" Number one, you scratch the nose, 
as if to chase a fly ; number two, you 
put your thumb in your mouth ; number 
three — " 

" H'm !" said the professor doubtfully, 



"those are singular instructions, scratch- 
ing the nose and sucking the thumb. 
It strikes me they have been teaching 
you nursery signals rather than Masonry 
signals." 

"My good friend," said the Scot with 
extreme politeness, yet not without dig- 
nity, "you cannot understand it, because 
you were not present. I received a Light 
which burned my eyelashes. The sage 




BEER-GAKDEN OF THE UAUPHIN. 



always examines a mystery before he 
decides upon it. My Masonic friend 
will be here at breakfast to-day : he 
promised me. Only wait for him. ile 
can explain these things better than I, 
you will see. The little experiments 
with our noses and thumbs, you under- 
stand, are symbols — Thummim and 
Urim, or something of that kind." 

"Or else nonsense. You have been 
quizzed, I fear." 

The North Briton bridled his head, 
knitted his brows and pushed back his 



58 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



chair ; then, after a moment of pregnant 
and stormy silence, he turned suddenly 
around to me, who was enjoying the 
comedy — " Hand me the cheese." 

To be taken for a waiter amused me. 
Never in the world would a domestic 
have dared to present himself in a 
hotel habited as I was. I was in the 
same clothes with which I had left Passy 
the morning previous : my coat was 
peppered with dust, my linen bruised 
and dingy, my tie was nodding doubt- 
fully over my right shoulder. A waiter 
in my condition would have been kicked 
out without arrears of wages. 

The professor, looking quickly around, 
recognized me with a ludicrous endeavor 
to relapse into the fiery and outraged 
patriot. He expended his temper on 
the red nose. "Take care whom you 
speak to," he 
cried in a 
high, portly 
voice, and 
pointing t o 
my japanned 
box, which I 
had slung 
upon a cur- 
t a in-h o ok. 
"Monsieur is 
not an a t- 
Monsieur is doubt- 




SUCKLED IN A CREED OUTWORN 



tache of the house, 
less an herb-doctor." 

There are charlatans who pervade the 
provincial parts of France, stopping a 
month at a time in the taverns, and 
curing the ignorant with simples accord- 
ing to the old system of signaturis — 
prescribing hepatica for liver, lentils 
for the eyes and green walnuts for va- 
pors, on account of their supposed 
correspondence to the different organs. 
I settled my cravat at the mirror to con- 
tradict my resemblance to a waiter, threw 
my box into a wine-cooler to dispose of 
my identity with the equally uncongenial 
herbalist, and took a seat. Nodding 
paternally to the coat of Prussian blue, 
I proceeded to order Bordeaux-Leoville, 
capon with Tarragon sauce, compote of 
nectarines in Madeira jelly — all super- 
fluous, for I was brutally hungry, and 
wanted chops and coffee ; but what will 



not an unsupported candidate for re- 
spectability do when he desires to assert 
his caste ? I was proceeding to ruin 
myself in playing the eccentric million- 
aire when the door opened, giving en- 
trance to a group of breakfasters. 

"There he is — that's the man!" said 
the homceopathist, much excited, and 
indicating to the blue coat a brisk, ca- 
pable-looking gentleman of thirty-two 
in a neat silver-gray overcoat. The lat- 
ter, after slightly touching his nose, nod- 
ded to the Sotchman, who in return 
drew himself up to his full height and 
formally wiped his mouth with a napkin, 
as if preparing himself for an oration. 
Happily, he contented himself with rub- 
bing his own nose with each hand in 
turn, and bowing so profoundly that he 
appeared ready to break at the knees. 

" Kellner ! ' " said the silver -gray, 
making a grand rattle among the plates 
and glasses, "some wine! some water! 
some ink ! an omelette ! a writing-pad ! 
2i.filetala Chabrillant /" 

The last-named dish is one which 
sciolists are perpetually calling filet a la 
Chateaubriand, saddling the poetic de- 
fender of Christianity with an invention 
in cookery of which he was never capa- 
ble. I approved the new-comer, who 
was writing half a dozen notes with his 
mouth full, for his nicety in nomencla- 
ture : to get the right term, even in 
kitchen affairs, shows a reflective mind 
and tenderness of conscience. My 
friend the engineer arrived, and placed 
himself in the chair I had turned up be- 
side my own. I was ashamed of the 
rate at which I advanced through my 
capon, but I recollected that Anne Bo- 
leyn, when she was a maid of honor, 
used to breakfast off a gallon of ale and 
a chine of beef. 

My canal-maker interrupted me with 
a sudden appeal. " Listen — listen yon- 
der," he said, jogging my knee, "it is 
very amusing. He is in a high vein to- 
day." 

The gray coat, who had already di- 
rected four or five letters, and was clean- 
ing his middle finger with a lemon over 
the glass bowl, had just opened a lofty 
geographical discussion with the blue- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



59 



bottle. I cannot express how eagerly I, 
as a theorist of some pretension in Com- 
parative Geography, awoke to a discus- 
sion in which my dearest opinions were 
concerned. 

"Geography," the active gentleman 
was saying as he dipped his finger in 
water to attach the flaps of his envelopes 
— "geography, my dear professor, is the 
most neglected of modern sciences. Ex- 
cuse me if I take from under you, for a 
moment, your doctoral chair, and land 
you on one of the forms of the primary 
department. I would ask a simple ele- 
mentary question : How many parts of 
the globe are there ?" 

" Before the loss of Alsace and Lor- 
raine," said the professor with plaintive 
humor, "I always reckoned six." 

"Very well : on this point we agree." 

"Six!" said the Scotchman in great 
surprise. "You are liberal : I make but 
five." 

"Not one less than six," said the pa- 
triot, vastly encouraged with the support 
he got : " am I not right, sir ? We have, 
first, Europe — " 

"Ah, professor," said the silver-gray, 
interrupting him, "how is this? You, 
such a distinguished scholar — you still 
believe in Europe ? Why, my dear sir, 
Europe no longer exists — certainly not 
as a quarter of the globe. It is simply, 
as Humboldt very truly remarks in his 
Cosmos ; the septentrional point of Asia." 

The surprise seemed to pass, at this 
point, from the face of the Scot to that 
of the Strasburger. After reflecting a 
moment, " Really," murmured he, " I re- 
collect, in Cosmos — But how, then, do 
you reach six parts of the globe ?" 

" Only count, professor : Asia, one ; 
Africa, two ; Australia, three ; Oceanica, 
four ; North America, five ; and South 
America, six." 

" You cut America in two ?" 

"Nature has taken that responsibility. 
Each part of the world being necessarily 
an insulated continent, an enormous 
island, it is too much to ask me to con- 
found the northern and southern conti- 
nents of America, hung together by a 
thread — a thread which messieurs the 
engineers" — he bowed airily to my com- I 



Sw 



panion — "have very probably severed 
by this time." 

The honest professor passed his hand 
over his forehead. "The deuce!" he 
said. "That is logic perhaps. Still, sir, 
I think it is rather hardy in you to double 
America and annihilate Europe, when 
Europe discovered America." 

"The Europeans did not discover 
America," replied the young philoso- 
pher. " The Americans discovered Eu- 
rope." 

The professor of geography remained 
stunned : the homceopathist gave utter- 
ance to a cry — one of admiration, doubt- 
less. 

"An American colony was settled in 
Norway long before the arrival of Co- 
lumbus in Santo Domingo : who will 
contradict 
me when 
Hum boldt 
says so? 
Only read 
your Cos- 
mos V ' 

"The 
dickens ! 
prodigious ! 
prodigi- 
ous!" re- 
peated the 
man of 
blue. The young silver coat went on : 

" I have been three times around the 
world, professor. The terrestrial globe 
was my only chart. I have studied in 
their places its divisions, continents, 
capes and oceans ; also the customs, 
politics and philosophies of its inhabit- 
ants. I have a weakness for learning ; 
I have caused myself to be initiated in 
all secret and philosophical societies ; I 
have taken a degree from the Brahmans 
of Benares ; I have received the acco- 
lade from the emir of the Druses ; I 
have been instructed by the priests of 
the Grand Lama, and have joined the 
Society of Pure Illumination, the sole 
possessors of the Future Light. I have 
just returned from Persia, where I re- 
ceived the blessing of the great Bab ; 
and, like Solomon, I can say, Vnnitas 
vanitatuni /" 




THE BLESSING OF THE BAR. 



6o 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



The red nose was by this time quite 
inflated and inflamed with disinterested 
pride. The blue was crushed, but he 
made a final effort, as the silver-gray 
made his preparations to depart and 
adjusted his breakfast-bill. "Pardon 
me, sir," he said, with a little infusion 
of provincial pride. " I am not a cos- 
mopolitan, a Constantinopolitan or a 
Babist. But I enjoy your conversation, 
and am not entirely without the ability 
to sympathize in your geographical cal- 
culations. I am preparing at the present 
moment a small treatise on Submarine 
Geography ; I am conducting, if that 
gives me any right to be heard, the geo- 
graphical department in the chief gym- 




nasium here: in addition, my youngest 
sister lost her ulnar bone by the ex- 
plosion of an obus in the seminary on 
the night of August 18th, when six inno- 
cent infants were killed or maimed by 
the Prussians, who put a bomb in their 
little beds like a warming-pan." 

"Never mind the warming-pan," said 
the traveler kindly, seeing that the pro- 
fessor was making himself cry, and un- 
consciously quoting Pickwick. 

" I will not dilate on my title to trouble 
you for a few words more. I perceive 
that I shall have a good deal to modify 
in my modest treatise. I beg you to 
give us your views on some of the modi- 
fications now going on in the East, 



especially the Turkish question 'and the 
civilization of China." 

"My dear professor," said the youth- 
ful Crichton sententiously, "do not dis- 
turb yourself with those problems, which 
are already disposed of. In twenty years 
the sultan will become a monk, to get 
rid of the chief sultana, who has pester- 
ed his life out with her notions of wo- 
man's rights, and who wore the Bloomer 
costume before the Crimean war. As 
for the question about China, it is better 
to let sleeping dogs lie : it has been a 
great mistake to arouse China, for it is 
a dog that drags after it three hundred 
millions of pups. Only see the effect 
already in Lima and San Francisco ! 
Before a century has elapsed all Asia, 
with Alaska and the Pacific part of 
America, to say nothing of that petty 
extremity you persist in calling Europe, 
will be in the power of China. Your 
little girls, professor, will be more liable 
to lose their feet than their arms, for it 
is a hundred chances to one but your 
great-grand-nieces grow up Chinawo- 
men." 

"Astonishing!" murmured the pro- 
fessor of geography. 

"Admirable !" cried the doctor. 

I had hitherto said nothing, though I 
was capitally entertained. At length I 
ventured to take up my own parable, 
and, addressing the pretended disciple 
of the Brahmans, I asked, " Can you en- 
lighten us, sir, on the true reason of the 
revolt of the slave States in America ?" 

The cosmopolitan, by this time stand- 
ing, turned to me with a courteous mo- 
tion of acquiescence ; and, after having 
given me to understand by an agreeable 
smile that he did not confound me with 
his pair of victims, he said pompously, 
"The true cause was that each Northern 
freeholder demanded the use of two 
planters, now mostly octoroons, for body- 
servants." 

"You don't say so?" said the school- 
teacher, profoundly impressed. 

The Scotchman looked like him who 
digesteth a pill. I decided quickly on my 
own role, and briskly joined the conver- 
sation. Fishing up my botany-box and 
extracting the little flower, "Nothing is 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



61 



more likely when you know the coun- 
try," I observed. " I have lived in Flor- 
ida, gentlemen, where I undertook, as 
Comparative Geographer and as ama- 
teur botanist" (I looked searchingly at 
the professor, who had called me an 
herb-doctor), "to fix the location of 
Ponce de Leon's fountain and observe 
the medicinal plants to which it owes its 
virtue. America, I must explain to you, 
is a country where proportions are great- 
ly changed. The pineapple tree there 
grows so very tall that it is impossible 
from the ground to reach the fruit. This 
little flower now in my hand becomes in 
that climate a towering and sturdy plant, 
the tobacco plant. The wild justice of 
those lawless savannahs uses it as a 
gibbet for the execution of criminals, 
whence the term ' Lynchburg tobacco.' 
You cannot readily imagine the scale 
on which life expands. It was formerly 
not necessary to be a great man there 
to have a hundred slaves. For my part, 
sixty domestics sufficed me" (I regard- 
ed sternly the homceopathist, who had 
taken me for a waiter) : " it was but a 
scant allowance, since my pipe alone 
took the whole time of four." 

" Oh," said the Scotchman, " allow me 
to doubt. I understand the distribution of 
blood among the planters, because I am'a 
homceopathist ; but what could your pipe 
gain by being diluted among four men ?" 

"The first filled it, the second lighted 
it, the third handed it and the fourth 
smoked it. I hate tobacco." 

The witticism appeared generally 
agreeable, and I laughed with the rest. 
The cheerful philosopher in the gray 
coat passed out : as he left the room, fol- 
lowed subserviently by his interlocutors, 
he bowed very pleasantly to me and shook 
hands with my guardian the engineer. 

"You know him ?" I said to the latter. 

"Just as well as you," he replied : "is 
it possible you don't recognize him ? »It 
is Fortnoye." 

" What ! Fortnoye — the Ancient of the 
wine-cellar at Epernay ?" 

" Certainly." 

" In truth it is the same jolly voice. 
Then his white beard was a disguise ?" 

" What would you have ?" 



" I am glad he is the same : I began 
to think the mystifiers here were as dan- 
gerous as those of the champagne coun- 
try. At any rate, he is a bright fellow." 

" He is not always bright. A man with 
so good a heart as his must be saddened 
sometimes, at least with others' woes, and 
he does not always escape woes of his 
own." 

This sentiment affected me, and irri- 
tated me a little besides, for I felt that it 
was in my own vein, and that it was I 
who had a right to the observation. I 
immediately quoted an extract from an 
Icelandic Saga to the effect that dead 
bees give a stinging quality to the very 
metheglin of the gods. We exchanged 
these remarks in crossing the vestibule 
of the hotel : a carriage was standing 
there for my friend. 

"I am sorry to leave you. I have a 
meeting with a Prussian engineer about 
bridges and canals and the waterworks 
of Vauban, and everything that would 
least interest you. I must cross imme- 
diately to Kehl. I leave you to finish 
the geography of Strasburg." 

" I know Strasburg by heart, and am 
burning to get out of it. I want to cross 
the Rhine, for the sake of boasting that 
I have set foot in the Baden territory. 
By the by, how have I managed to come 
so far without a passport ?" 

" This did it," said my engineer, tap- 
ping the tin box, which a waiter had re- 
stored to me in a wonderful state of 
polish. " I put a plan or two in it, with 
some tracing muslin, and allowed a 
spirit-level to stick out. You were asleep. 
I know all the officials on this route. I 
had only to tap the box and nod. You 
passed as my assistant. Nobody could 
have put you through but I." 

"You are a vile conspirator," said I 
affectionately, "and have all the lower 
traits of the Yankee character. But I 
will use you to carry me to Kehl, as 
Faust used Mephistopheles. By the by, 
your carriage is a comfortable one and 
saves my time. I have two hours before 
I need return to the train." 

" It is double the time vou will need." 




ZF-AJaT 1 "7". 



IN PURSUIT OF A PASSPORT. 




THE SIGN OF THE " STORK.' 



,,r T^HE Strasburgers have a legend — " 
-L We were rolling along very com- 
fortably in the engineer's coach. From 
pavement to bridge, and from bridge to 
pavement, we effected the long step 
which bestrides the Rhine. 

" I knew you would prick your ears 

up at the word. Well, I have found a 

legend among the people here about the 

original acquisition of Strasburg by the 

62 



French. You know Louis XIV. bagged 
the city quite unwarrantably in 1 681, in 
a time of peace." 

I was much delighted with this begin- 
ning, and told my friend that to cross 
the storied Rhine and simultaneously 
listen to a legend made me feel as if I 
were Frithiof the Viking entertained on 
his voyage by a Skald. 

"The Alsatians will have it," said my 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



63 



canal-digger, "that the Grand Monarch 
was a bit of a magician. The depth of 
what I may call his High-Church senti- 
ment, which at last proved so edifying 
to the Maintenon, has never convinced 
them that he wasn't a trifle in league 
with the devil. At the foot of his pray- 
ing-chair was always chained a small 




A GRAND MONARCH AND A LITTLE YELLOW IMP 



casket of ebony, bound with iron. In 
this he imprisoned a little yellow man, 
a demon of the most concentrated struc- 
ture, hardly a foot long. This goblin 
ran through the air, on an errand or 
with a letter, about as fast as a stroke of 
lightning, and admirably filled the place 
of the modern telegraph. For each meal 
he took three seeds of hemp, which he 
loved to receive from the king's hand. 
By and by the little yellow man became 
more of a gourmand. He demanded 
seed-pearls, and the king was obliged 
to rob the queen's jewel-boxes. Then 
the yellow dwarf's appetite changed, 



and he required stars, orders and gar- 
ters : one by one the obedient monarch 
gave him the decorations of count, mar- 
quis, duke. The demon's name was 
Chamillo. 

"One day the small devil-duke of a 
Chamillo hovered over the imperial free 
city of Strasburg. Entering by key- 
holes and doors 
ajar, he stole into the 
presence of the prin- 
cipal magistrates, 
and shortly after the 
impregnable capital 
of Alsace opened its 
gates at a show of 
French investment. 
"For this import- 
ant service Louis 
XIV. fancied that 
Chamillo would re- 
quire the letters 
patent constituting 
him a prince. Not 
at all. Chamillo was 
tired of secular hon- 
ors: he had seen the 
bishop of Strasburg 
officiating in scarlet, 
and he insisted on 
being made cardi- 
nal. The king 
could not make car- 
dinals, and he doubt- 
ed whether he could 
induce the pope to 
receive a devil 
among the upper 
clergy. He refused 
absolutely. Chamillo left him in dud- 
geon and went over to Prussia. Appa- 
rently he has remained there. At any 
rate, the French king's fortunes com- 
menced at that epoch to decline, and 
the Peace of Ryswick almost deprived 
him of Strasburg, which the little yellow 
man wanted to get back for Germany." 
We had quitted Strasburg by the gate 
of Austerlitz. While listening to my 
friend I kept an eye open, and exam- 
ined the present state of the fortress, the 
incidents of the road to Kehl, and that 
fairy He des Epis, a perfect little Eden in 
the Rhine, where the tall trees and nod- 



6 4 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



ding flowers bury the tomb of Dessaix, 
with its inscription, "A Dessaix, l'Armee 
du Rhin, 1800." This bright morning- 



ride enchanted me, seasoned as it was 

with a goblin -story. 

• " Behind this tale, now, there must be 




a fact," I said. "There is some bit of 
history concealed there. The common 
people never invent: they distort." 

" It is possible," he answered. " I tell 
you the story as it was told me by one 



of my theodolite-bearers. You may find 
out the rest : it is in your line." 

Kehl has been bombarded or razed a 
dozen times by French armies crossing 
the Rhine. The last occasion when the 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



65 



French ruined it, however, was not in 
vain-glory, but in impotent malice. They 
fired it on August 19, 1870, during the 
horrors of the Strasburg bombardment. 



It is a town formed of a single street — 
But I will enter no further into topo- 
graphic details. 

I entered this town or street in haste. 




BEGGARS AT BALE. 



leaving my engineering acquaintance 
talking to a Prussian general. The idea 
had seized me of writing a line to Ho- 
henfels at Marly, actually dated from the 
grand duchy of Baden. Undoubtedly 
I should reach Marly before my letter, 
but the postal mark would be a good 
proof of the actuality of my wanderings. 
Clinging, then, to my childishness, as we 




HOW THINGS FELL OUT. 

do to most of our follies, with a fidelity 
which it would be well to imitate in our 
grave affairs, and feeling pressed for time, 
I looked eagerly around for a resting- 
place where I could procure ink and 
5 



paper, and entered at the sign of the 
" Stork." I found a smoky crowd, peas- 
ants and military, sucking German pipes 
and drinking from a variety of glasses, 
pots, syphons and jugs. I had taken up 
my pen when an individual by my side, 
at the next table, said to his opposite 
neighbor, " The French will hardly take 
Strasburg again by surprise, as they did 
two centuries ago." 

"It was not the French who took 
Strasburg," replied the vis-a-vis, evident- 
ly a native : " it was the little urchin in 
yellow." 1 

The expression, joined to what I had 
just heard in the carriage, was sufficient 
to attract my attention. My neighbor, 
a Belgian by his accent, opened his eyes. 
The man opposite, perceiving that he 
had more than one auditor, narrated at 
length, in substance and detail, not the 
fairy legend of the Alsatians, but accu- 
rately, and to my amusement, the his- 
torical anecdote which I had imagined 
to be wrapped up in that tale. So then, 
while he spoke, I wrote — no longer to 
Hohenfels, but to my own consciousness 
and memory — these little notes on Cha- 
millo, or rather Chamilly, and obtained 
a trifling contribution to the back-stairs 
history of the Grand Nation. 

" The marquis of Chamilly, afterward 
marshal of France, was often promised 



66 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



a good place for a young nephew he had 
by the powerful Minister de Louvois. 
Each time, however, that the youth pre- 




"7? *- 

THE LITTLE IMP IN YELLOW 

sented himself the experienced minister 
said, ' Bide your time, young man : I see 
nothing yet on the horizon worthy of 
you.' The boy sulked in the tortures of 
hope deferred. One day in September, 
1681, Louvois said, 'Young man, post 
yourself at Bale on the 18th day of this 
month, from noon to four o'clock : stand 
on the bridge ; take a note of all you 
see, without the least omission ; come 
back and report to me ; and as you ac- 
quit yourself so your future shall be.' 
The young chevalier found himself on 
the bridge at Bale at high noon. He ex- 
pected to meet some deputation from the 
Swiss cantons, with the great landam- 
man at the head. What he really saw 
were carts, villagers, flocks of sheep, 
children who chased each other, men- 
dicants who, with Swiss independence, 
demanded alms rather than begged it. 
He gave to each, imagining in each a 
mysterious agent. An old woman cross- 
ing the bridge on a bucking donkey, 
who threw her, he picked up obsequi- 
ously, not knowing but this fall might 
be a manoeuvre of state, and the pre- 
cipitate take the form of the landamman 
in disguise : he had even the idea of 



running after the donkey, but the animal 
was already galloping with great relish 
outside the assigned limits to his diplo- 
macy. When tired of the sun, the dust 
and the triviality of the panorama, Cha- 
milly prepared to go. It was nearing 
the hour fixed for his departure, and the 
absence of all significant events vexed 
him. As if to put a crown on his dis- 
comfiture, toward the close of the last 
hour an odd little urchin, grotesquely 
dressed in a yellow coat, came to beat 
old blankets over the parapet, and flirt- 
ed the dirt and fluff into the young man's 
eyes. Already angered, he was about 
to hang the young imp for a minute or 
two over the bridge, when four o'clock 
sounded, his duty came to his mind, and 
he departed. 

"In the middle of the third night, tired 
and humiliated, he reappeared before 
the minister and 
recounted his fail- 
ure. When he 
came to the little 
page in yellow, 
Louvois fell on 
his neck and kiss- 
ed him. Chamil- 
ly was dragged 
incontinently be- 
fore the king. 
Louis XIV., who 
was snoring with 
his royal nose in 
the air, was waked 
for the purpose, 
and heard with 
attention the story 

of the beggars, the donkey and the little 
monkey in yellow livery. At the appa- 
rition of the Yellow Jacket, Louis XIV. 
leaped over the ruelle and danced a 
saraband in his night-gown. Chamilly 
might perhaps have considered himself 
sufficiently rewarded in being the only 
man who ever saw the superb king 
dancing with bare legs in a wig hastily 
put on crosswise. But to this recom- 
pense others were added. The monarch 
named him chevalier of his orders, count 
and counselor of state, to the grand 
stupefaction of the young man, who un- 
derstood nothing- about it. 




/ ,== t> 



THE TRAIN IS STARTING. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



67 



"The little yellow urchin, shaking his 
blankets, announced to the king's envoy, 
on the part of the perjured Strasburg 
magistrates, that the city was betrayed." 

I had now that rare complementing 
pair, a legend and its historical founda- 
tion. I had been obliged to cross the 
Rhine to obtain my prize, but I did not 
regret the journey. How far I was from 
fancying the ill-natured turn that the 
little yellow man was playing me ! 

While my neighbor of the Stork was 
talking, and I was taking down his 
words with my utmost rapidity, Time 



took advantage of me, and put double 
the accustomed length into each of his 
steps. On recrossing into Strasburg I 
had before me barely the moments 
necessary to regain the railway station. 

The gate at the first-class passenger- 
exit was about closing, fifteen minutes 
in advance of the start, according to the 
European custom. I pushed in rather 
roughly. 

The railway-officer or porter was at 
the gate, barring my passage until I 
could exhibit a ticket. I had not taken 
time to purchase one : the train was 




JUSTICE AND VENGEANCE PURSUING CRIME. 



fuming and threatening the belated pas- 
sengers with a series of false starts. Sur- 
prised into rudeness, and quite forgetting 
that my appearance warranted no airs 
of autocracy, I made some contempt- 
uous remark. 

"Der Herr is much too hasty. Der 
Herr is doubtless provided with the ne- 
cessary papers which will enable him to 
pass the French frontier." 

It was not the porter who spoke now : 
it was some kind of official relic or shad- 
ow or mouchard left from the old cus- 
tom-house, and suffered to hang on 
the railway - station as an ornament. 
His costume, half uniform and half fa- 
tigue-dress, compromised nobody, and 
was surmounted by a skull cap. His 
pantaloons were short, his figure was 



paunchy, authoritative and German. 
His German, however, was spoken with 
a French accent. As I mused in stupe- 
faction upon the hint he had uttered, he 
pointed with his hand. "The train is 
starting," he observed. 

The reader probably knows Prud- 
hon's great picture in the Louvre, orig- 
inally painted for the Palace of Justice, 
and entitled " Divine Justice and Ven- 
geance in Pursuit of Crime " ? This pic- 
ture, which I had not thought of, I sup- 
pose, for an age, suddenly seemed to be 
realized before me, but the heavenly 
detectives were changed into mortal 
gendarmes. The porter and the nonde- 
script threw back the gate, preventing 
my passage. The terrors of Prudhon's 
avenging spirits were all expressed, to 



68 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



my thinking, in the looks which these 
two official people exchanged in my fa- 
vor, and then bent on me. We stood in 
a triangle. 

"One moment: I propose a plan," I 
cried in desperation. " I do not know a 
soul in Strasburg, and the friend who 
brought me here is gone, I cannot tell 
whither. But I have an acquaintance 
in the British consulate at Carlsruhe — 
Berkley, you know," I explained with 
an insane familiarity, "my old friend 
Berkley's nephew. Admit me to the 
train, and we will telegraph to him. His 
reply will come in ten minutes, and will 
show you my responsible character. I 
have come fifteen minutes in advance 
of the starting-hour." 

"The wire to Carlsruhe," said the 
porter, "is under repairs." 

"The train to Paris," said the second 
man, "is off." 

Some fate was pursuing me. Rudely 
rejected at the wicket, and treated as a 
man without a nationality, I felt as if I 
had but one friend now available on 
earth — the friend who had come into 
my head while conversing with the rail- 
way guard. Old Mr. Berkley, Mr. Sylves- 
ter Berkley and I had once breakfasted 
together at Brighton, the first sitting in 
a tub, the second eating nothing but 
raw macerated beef, and I for my part 
devouring toast and Icelandic poetry. 
The nephew had since gone into diplo- 
macy to strengthen his bile. I had not 
seen him for years. 

I approached the schedule of distances 
hanging on the wall. My movements 
were those of a man prostrated and re- 
signed. I ran my forefinger over the 
departures from Kehl to Carlsruhe. 

In three hours I was in the latter city. 

It was not in beggar's guise that Paul 
Flemming would fain be seen in the 
capital of the grand duchy — the most 
formal capital, the most symmetrical 
capital, the most monumental capital, 
as it is the youngest capital, in Eu- 
rope. Nor was it as a vagabond that 
he would wish to appear in that capital, 
before a friend who happened to be 
a diplomatist. I recollected the engag- 
ing aspect in which I had offered myself 



to the reflections of the Rhine when last 
beside that romantic stream — a comely 
youth, with Stultz's best waistcoats on 
his bosom and with ineffable sorrows in 
his heart. Frau Himmelauen used to 
say, at Heidelberg, that my gloves were 
a shade too light for a strictly virtuous 




SUSPICIOUS BAGGAGE. 



man. The Frau has gone to her account, 
and Stultz, the great Stultz, is defunct 
too, after achieving for himself a baron- 
etcy as the prize of his peerless scissors, 
and founding a hospital here in Carls- 
ruhe. Not to insult the shade of Stultz, 
I determined to renew my youth, at least 
in the matter of plumage. A shop of 
ready-made clothing afforded me lav- 
ender gloves, silk pocket handkerchief, 
satin cravat, detachable collar and a 
cambric shirt : the American dickey, in 
which some of my early sartorial tri- 
umphs were effected, is not to be had in 
Rhineland. My ornaments purchased, 
the trouble was — to change my shirt. 
The great hotel, the Erbprinz, was no 
place for a man without a passport and 
without baggage : not for the world would 
I have faced a hotel-clerk with his ac- 
cusing register. Yet the street was not 
to be thought of: only cats are allowed 
by etiquette to freshen their linen on the 
doorstep. 

A resource occurred to me. In ran- 
sacking the city for my ornaments I had 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



69 



observed the castle-park, with its clumps 
of verdure and almost deserted walks. 
Hurrah for the leafy dressing-room ! 

At the gate a sentinel stopped me. 
Would he demand my passport? No: 



he taps with his finger the lid of that 
faithful botany - box, my sole valise. 
Aware that it contained nothing contra- 
band, I opened it innocently and demon- 
stratively. At the sight of that resonant 




CAKLSKUHE : THE GRAND-DUCAL PARK. 



cavity, gaping from ear to ear and belch- 
ing forth gloves, kerchiefs and minor 
haberdashery, the dragon laughed : his 
mirth took the form of a deep, guttural, 
honest German guffaw. He still, how- 



ever, rapped sonorously on my box. 
shaking his head from side to side like 
a china mandarin. In his view my box 
was luggage, and luggage is not permit- 
ted in any European park. Relieved to 



7° 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



find that my detention was not more 
serious, my first thought was to comply 
with the conditions of entrance. I beg- 
ged to leave my package in the sentry- 
box, to be reclaimed at departure. The 
amiable Cerberus, smiling and nodding, 
closed his eyes significantly : at this mo- 
ment I recollected that my only motive 
for entering the park lay in that feature 
of my paraphernalia, and caught it up 
again, with a gesture of parental . vio- 
lence, in the very act of depositing it. 
The sentry, watching with increasing 
delight my evolutions and counter-evo- 
lutions, evidently thought me a nimble 
lunatic, Heaven-sent for the recreation 
of his long watch. He no longer op- 
posed any of my demonstrations, and 
finally, with a hearty chuckle, saw me 
slink past him into the groves, wardrobe 
in hand. Most accommodating of sen- 
tinels, why were you not in charge of a 
Paris barrier during the siege ? 

Once within the park, I found that my 
sight had deceived me : the day was hot, 
and the public, driven from the sunny 
walks, were concentrated in the shade. 
Not a bough but sheltered its group 
of Arcadians. I wended from tree to 
tree, describing singular zigzags on the 




THE GENTLE CERBEKUS. 



sward. The guardians began to eye me 
with lively interest. Finally, Fortune 
having guided me to a beautiful thick- 
et, a closet curtained with evergreens, I 
prepared to use it for my toilet, and re- 
linquished a sleeve of my coat. At that 




THE EYE OF ARGUS. 



moment one of my watchmen suddenly 
showed himself. 

Looking at him with extreme serious- 
ness, I slowly re-entered my sleeve, and 
walked away with unnecessary dignity, 
giving the guardian my patronage in 
the shape of a 
nod, which he 
did not return. 

Forbidden the 
green-room, what 
if I tried the bath- 
room ? Hastily 
making for the 
Square of the 
Obelisk, I took 
a carriage, en- 
gaging it by the 
hour, and direct- 
ing it to the near- 
est bathing - es- 
tabli's h men t. 
The driver im- 
mediately ran off 
with me outside 
the city. 

Carlsruhe is an aristocratic construc- 
tion, whose princely mansions are sup- 
posed to be supplied with their own 
thermal conveniences. The locality sug- 
gested for my bath proved to be a vast 
suburban garden, buried in flowers, with 
amorous young couples promenading 
the alleys, and tables crowned with 
cylinders of beer, each wadded with its 
handful of foam. At the extremity, on 
a square building, five lofty letters spell- 
ed out the word Baden. 

A waiter showed me a handsome bath, 
decorated with a tub like some Roman 
mausoleum. I instructed him as to the 
temperature of my desired plunge. He 
nodded quietly, and left me. Twenty 
minutes passed. I thought of my friend 
Sylvester Berkley, of the document I 
hoped to obtain by his aid, and, most 
fondly, of the hour when I could return 
from Carlsruhe. I thought of the little 
group who at Marly were expecting and 
reproaching me. Charles now, for the 
twentieth time, would be brushing my 
morning suit and smoking - cap : Jo- 
sephine, in the act of whipping a may- 
onnaise, would draw anxiously to the 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



7i 



window. The baron, my galling and 
indispensable old Hohenfels, would have 
arrived and scolded. My home -circle 




BIER UND BADEN. 



was like a ring without its jewel, while 
I, an undenominated waif in search of 
a vise, was fluttering through the duchy 
of Baden. Thirty minutes passed, and 
the bath-house retained the silence of a 
ruined monastery, while outside, among 
the perfumes and shadows of twilight, 
there began to arise strains of admirable 
harmony. I looked out of the window. 
Some lanterns placed among the trees 
were already beginning to assert their 
light among the shadows of evening. 
A chorus of fresh and accurate voices 
was pouring forth from the garden, the 
pure young tenors and altos weaving their 
melodies like network over the sustained, 
vibrating, vigorous bass voices. It was the 
antiphony of the youthful promenaders 
to the drinkers, the diastole of the heart 
above the stomach, the elisire d'amore 
in rivalry with beer. Amid this scene I 
recognized my waiter, illuminated fitful- 
ly like some extraordinary firefly as he 
sprang into sight beneath the successive 
lanterns, and pouring out beer to right 
and left. To my indignant appeal he 
turned, lifting his head, and stood in 



that attitude, finishing a musical phrase 
which he was contributing to the chorus. 
Then he told me that my bath was being 
made ready. The Teutonic placidity of 
this youth confounded me. Quite dis- 
armed, I closed the shutter, changed my 
linen in the dark, and drew on my gloves 
over a pair of hands that decidedly need- 
ed the disguise. The lateness of the 
hour alarmed me, and I fled down the 
stair in three jumps. At the bottom I 
met my musical waiter, still tranquilly 
singing, and armed with a linen wrapper 
and a hairbrush. 

"What do I owe ?" I asked. 

" Is der Herr not going to take his 
bath ?" asked this most leisurely of 
valets. 

"No." 

"Very well: it will be half a florin, 
including towels." 

I gave him the half-florin, and was 
getting into my cab, when he came 
rambling up. 

"And the palm -greaser," he cried, 
"the trinkgeld ?" 

In ten minutes I was at the offices of 
the national representative, but it was 
now dark, and the porter, without wait- 
ing for my question, told me that the 
offices were closed and everybody gone 
to the opera. 

"The theatre!" I shouted to my 
charioteer. 

The ticket-seller was asleep in his box, 
and was much astonished at my applica- 
tion for an orchestra-seat. The last act 
of some obscure German opera was being 




AN EXHAUSTED TRAVELER. 

shouted in full chorus. At Carlsruhe 
the theatre opens at five o'clock, and 
closes virtuously at half- past eight. 
There was no sign of my friend, no in- 
dication of a box for members of the 
diplomatic body. I was very hungry, 
and would willingly have re-entered the 
boulevards in search of a supper ; but 



72 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



the express - train going toward Paris 
would start at ten-fifteen, and I could 
afford to think of nothing but my pass- 
port. I drove to the national office 
again, my new costume quite shipwreck- 
ed and foundered in perspiration. 

I was more explicit with the porter this 



time. I asked if Mr. Sylvester Berkley 
had returned from the opera. I was 
answered by that functionary that Mr. 
Pairkley was living at present in the city 
of Heidelberg, where he was trying a 
diet of whey for the benefit of his liver. 
I became flaccid with despair. I was 




THE SUNNY GROVE. 



without a refuge on the habitable globe ; 
my slender provision of funds would be 
exhausted in paying for the carriage ; I 
was unable even to seek the friend who 
for the moment represented to me both 
country and fortune. The driver, wit- 
ness of my dejection and recipient of 
my history in part, proposed to me a 
temporary refuge in a private hotel on the 
avenue of Ettlingen, where I would find 
chambers by the day, and a family table. 
The landlady, he believed, was a Belgian 
and a widow. 

We drew up before a small house of 
neat appearance. I was shown a cham- 
ber, where, no longer dreaming of sup- 



per, I fell across a cushion like an over- 
thrown statue. I felt as if a good month 
must have passed since I possessed a 
home. 

I had in pocket about thirty sous. 
The philosopher was right enough when 
he said, "Traveling lengthens one's life ;" 
only he should have added, " It shortens 
one's purse." 

On awakening next morning the lin- 
nets and finches communicated through 
the window a pleasanter sentiment. Na- 
ture was gay and inspiring on this lovely 
May-day. By a perversity quite natural 
with me, my letter to Berkley, which it 
was my first care to write and post, con- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



73 



tained but a slight reflection of my woes. 
My need of a passport only appeared 
in a postscriptum, wherein I begged him 
to arrange that little affair for me in some 
way by correspondence. The bulk of 
my communication was a eulogy of 
May, of youth, of flowers, of birds, all 




THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS 



of which were saluting me as I scribbled 
from the beautiful little grove outside my 
casement. Treating the diplomate as 
an intimate friend — a caprice of the mo- 
ment on my part — I begged him to go 
back with me to Marly, promising him 
the joys described in old Thomas Ran- 
dolph's invitation to the country : 

We'll seek a shade, 
And hear what music's made — 

How Philomel 

Her tale doth tell, 
And how the other birds do fill the choir: 

The thrush and blackbird lend their throats, 

Warbling melodious notes. 
We will all sport enjoy, which others but desire. 

I engaged to furnish him his regimen of 
whey, and did not omit to quote from 
the same poem, apropos of that mild 
Anacreontic drink, the lines which hap- 
pen to introduce his name : 

And drink by stealth 

A cup or two to noble Barkleys health. 

"The cup," I continued, "shall be at 
once your toast and your medicine, and 
the whey shall be fresh. If you want 



to make a Tartar of yourself, and feed 
on koumiss, I will have the milk fer- 
mented." To the baron of Hohenfels I 
wrote with equal gayety, begging him to 
plant the stakes of his tent in my garden 
until my own nomadic career should be 
finished. A third letter, as my reader 
may imagine, was 
directed to the Rue 
Scribe, and ad- 
dressed to the 
American banker, 
the beloved of all 
money-n eeding 
compatriots — Mr. 
John Munroe. 

My letters com- 
mitted to a domes- 
tic, I felt absolutely 
relieved from care. 
I breathed freely, 
and recovered all 
my self-possession. 
Sing loud, little 
birds ! it is a com- 
rade who listens to 
you. 

With two days, 
perhaps three, of 
enforced leisure before me, I undertook 
in a singular spirit of deliberation the 
criticism of my surroundings. I began 
with my bed - chamber. It contained 
both a stove and a fireplace. The fire- 
place was like all other fireplaces, but 
not so the stove. Stark and straight, 
rising from floor to ceiling, it was fixed 
immovably in the wall, a pilaster of 
porcelain. No stove - door interrupted 
its enameled shaft : only a register of 
fretwork for the emission of heat, and 
quite dissociated from the cares of fire- 
building, relieved the ennui of this syb- 
aritic length of polish. It was kindled 
— and that is the special merit of this 
famous invention — from without, in the 
corridor which borders the line of rooms. 
If you put the idea to profit, O overtoast- 
ed friends of Flemming, I shall not re- 
gret my forced inspection of Carlsruhe. 
I would distinguish less honorably that 
small oblique looking-glass inserted in 
the bevel of the window-jamb, and com- 
mon to all the dwellings of Carlsruhe — 



74 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



a handy article, an entertaining distrac- 
tion, a discreet but immoral spy, which 
places at your mercy all the mysteries 
of the public street. This contrivance, 
which enables you to see the world with- 
out being seen, certainly gives you a 
tempting advantage over the untimely 
caller or the impertinent creditor; but it 
encourages, in my opinion, a habit of vis- 
ion better adapted to a sultan's seraglio 
than to the discreet eyes of Western folk. 
This reflection, by which I satisfied 
my perhaps exalted moral sense, was no 
sooner made than I found myself peep- 
ing to right and to left in my double 
mirror, not without a lively sense of 
curiosity. At first I saw — what Flem- 
ming, indeed, was wont to see when he 
consulted the Fountain of Oblivion — 
only streets and moss-grown walls and 
trembling spires, like those of the great 
City of the Past, and children playing 
in the gardens like reverberations from 
one's lost youth. Soon a nearer image 
approached. From a troop of blond 
girls, who dragged after them little cha- 
riots resembling baby-wagons, one dam- 
sel drew apart, allowing the others to 
pass on. She neared my window. 
Who is the maiden with the anachronic 
baby-cart ? She is the milkmaid of the 
country. Here 
in Germany Per- 
rette does not 
poise her milk 
upon her head 
or weigh it in a 
balance, in order 
to afford by its 
overthrow a fable 
to La Fontaine. 
She can dream at 
her ease as she 
draws it behind 
her. My fair- 
haired neighbor 
paused. A tall 
lad thereupon emerged from the neigh- 
boring trees, and, replacing Perrette at 
her wagon, he fitted himself dexterously 
into her maiden dream and into the 
shafts of her equipage. As the avenue 
was deserted for the instant, his arm 
enlaced her figure, with the obvious and 




THE TALE OF BRICKS. 



commendable purpose of sustaining her 
in her walk, and with his lips close to 
her smiling, rosy ones he contributed a 
gentle note to the hymeneal chorus that 
was twittered from the trees. 

Who could remain long shut up from 
such an out-of-doors ? Directly I was 
in the open air, scenting the fresh breath 
from the parks. I inspected the streets. 




THE FLY-BRUSH. 

the factories, the people, the houses. A 
prolonged and deliberate examination 
of Carlsruhe enables me to assert that it 
is the most easy-going, slow-paced, loi- 
tering, temporizing, procrastinating cap- 
ital outside of Dreamland. 

A young workingman was assisting 
some bricklayers in an extension adja- 
cent to the foundry of Christofle and 
Company. I saw him going, with a slow 
and lounging pace, toward the brick- 
pile, stopping by the way to quench his 
thirst at a hydrant, whose stream was so 
slender that a good many applications 
of the cup of Diogenes were necessary 
to allay the heat concentred in the fel- 
low's thick throat. Arrived finally at 
the heap of bricks, the goal of his prom- 
enade, he took up precisely six, and pro- 
ceeded with a lordly, lounging step to 
bear them back to the masons. Then, 
folding his arms, he watched the imbed- 
ding of those bricks in their plaster with 
a sovereign calm like that of Vitellius 
eating figs at the combats of the gladi- 
ators. When he consented to take up 
again his serene march, it was the turn 
of the bricklayers to fold their arms. At 
each errand he consulted the hydrant, 
and the builders watched all his move- 
ments with sympathy and approval. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



75 




I photograph the moving figures in 
the street with the same simple fidel- 
ity which I have employed to represent 
the trouble - saving conveniences of my 
chamber. Take another hero, equally 
worthy of Capua. The placid person- 
age who assist- 
ed me to a bath 
in my room was 
as happy a dull- 
ard as my wait- 
er in the Baden, 
and both of 
them caressed 
their job as Nar- 
cissus caressed 
the fountain. 

A large cart 
drew up before 
the knight of the bath, the door, con- 
taining twelve 
kegs, thoroughly bunged. Any stran- 
ger would take the load for one of 
beer, but a tub among the kegs acted as 
interpreter. The young man from the 
baths in the first place saw to his horse. 
He walked around it : the drive having 
heated the animal, he covered it with a 
cloth, and guaranteed its head against 
the flies with several plumes of foliage, 
beneath which Dobbin, blinded but 
content, showed only the paralytic flap- 
ping of his pendulous, negro-like lips. 
These indispensable cares despatched, 
the young man from the 
baths brought up the 
tub after a short gossip 
with the kitchen-maid, 
who was going out to 
market. He asked her 
if there were a stable 
attached where he could 
put up the horse during 
the taking of the bath : 
being answered in the 
negative, he then, with 
an almost painful in- 
consequence of argument, chucked the 
girl under the chin. He next inquired 
if she had any soap-fat. At length he 
consented to lumber up the steps with 
one of his little kegs : the tenacity of the 
bung was so exemplary that a long time 
was consumed in getting the advantage 




GANYMEDE. 



J over it, and the water on its part was 
j but tardy in leaping toward the tub in a 
I series of strangulations. This formula, 
interrupted by minute attentions to the 
horse, had to be repeated twelve times, 
and the bath, which commenced as a 
warm bath, received its guest as a cold 
one. Such was the result when to the 
languor of the individual was added the 
national complication of apparatus. 

The deliberate spectator — or, if you 
will, the imprisoned spectator like myself, 
with his artificial leisure — asks himself 
how long a time was consumed by this 
little country of Baden, by this people so 
lumpish in its labor, so restricted in its 
movements, so friendly to its own ease, 
in building its elegant metropolis of 
mansions and palaces? There is some- 
thing piquant in learning that the city is 
the hastiest construction on the conti- 
nent. It only dates from the year 171 5. 
Carlsruhe reminds the American trav- 
eler of Washing- 
ton. In place of 
the tortuous plan 
and picturesque 
inconvenience of 
the antique capi- 
tals, it offers a pre- 
determined and 
courteous radia- 
tion of broad streets from the grand- 
ducal palace, much like the fan of av- 
enues that spreads away from the Cap- 
itol building. Formal as it is, and re- 
cent as it is, Carlsruhe affords as pretty 
a legend as any fairy-founded city of 
dimmest ancestry. 

The margrave Charles of Baden, hunt- 
er and warrior, returned from victory to 
bathe his soul in the sylvan delights of 
the chase. One day, as he coursed the 
stag in the Haardt Forest, he lay down 
with a sudden sense of fatigue, and fell 
asleep : an oak tree shadowed him with 
its broad canopies. Dreaming, he saw 
the green boughs separate, and in the 
zenith of the heavens descried a crown 
blazing with incredible jewels, and in- 
scribed with letters that he felt rathei 
than spelled : "This is the reward of the 
noble." All around the crown, hanging 
in air like sculptured cloudwork, spread 




ARRESTED MOTION. 



76 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



a splendid city with towers : a noble 
castle, with open portal and stairway 
inviting his princely feet, stood at the 
centre, and the spires of sacred churches 
still sought, as they seek on earth, to 
pierce the unattainable heaven. When 



he awoke his courtiers were around him, 
for they had searched and found their 
lord while he slept. He related his 
dream, and declared his ducal will to 
build on that very spot a city just as he 
had seen it, with a splendid palace for 




'2^-tj. 



THE PIPERS. 



central point, and streets like the spokes 
of light that spread from the sinking sun. 
So he said, and gave his whole soul to 
building this graceful capital and devel- 
oping it with the arts of peace ; for here- 
tofore he had thought only of war, and 
had meant to patch up a seat of govern- 
ment in the little town of Durlach. 

The Haardtwald still spreads around 
Carlsruhe ("Charles's Rest") to the 
eastward, but the bracken and under- 
brush have given way to beaten roads, 
which prolong with perfect regularity the 
fan of streets. An avenue of the finest 
Lombardy poplars in Germany, the trees 
being from ninety to a hundred and 
twenty feet high, extends for two miles 
to Durlach. Around the city spread 
rich plum and cherry orchards, yielding 
the "lucent sirops " from which is dis- 
tilled the famous Kirschvvasser. 

The reputation for drunkenness, in 
my opinion, has been very erroneously 
fastened upon the German population. 
During my sojourn in Carlsruhe I have 
paid many a visit to the beer-shops, from 
the petty taverns frequented by the poor 
to the lofty saloons where Ganymedes 
in white skirts shuffled with huge tank- 
ards through a perfect forest of orange 
trees in tubs ; for, worse luck to my 



morals, I have not seen a single frightful 
example, not one individual balancing 
dispersedly over his legs. In the grand 
duchy of Baden the debauch is punish- 
ed by a law of somewhat harsh logic, 
which commits to prison both drunkards 
and those who have furnished the where- 
withal to excess. The common people 
form a nation of drinkers, not drunkards. 
The beer-tables are usually placed in the 
open air, with shelter for the patrons in 
case of bad weather. The out-door air 



Wt 4 

INCENSE AT THE ALTAR. 

is almost indispensable to correct the 
evils which might proceed from such an 
artillery of pipes all fired in concert. 

For Germany, if not a land of intoxi- 
cation, is certainly one of fumigation. 
The face of a German is composed in- 



THE NEW HYPE RIO X. 



77 



variably of the following features : two 
eyes, a nose, a mouth, and a pipe. 
Whichever of these features is movable, 
the pipe at least is a fixture. Fortified 



by this vital organ, he lives, loves and 
moves. 





ZP^IR,T VI 



SHALL AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT 



MY first dinner in the avenue of 
Ettlingen followed upon the 
twelve -barreled bath, but was far 
from being so glacial a refreshment. 
As I descended, quite pink and glow- 
ing, I found eight or ten individuals 
in the dining-room. They were 
French and Belgians, and exchanged 
a lively conversation in half a dozen 
provincial accents. The servants too 
talked French in levying on the cook 
for provisions : for this, as I have 
since learned, the domestics of my 
snug little boarding-house were 
deemed somewhat pretentious by the 
serving -people of the vicinity, who 
considered the tongue of Paris a sort 
of court language, for circulation 
among aristocrats only, and supposed 
that even in France the hired folk 
all talked German. My reception at 
the cheerful board was as cordial as 
possible. 

Placed opposite me, our ytfung hostess 
was looking in my direction with an in- 
tentness that struck me as singular. My 
passport was uppermost in my mind. I 
was not, however, very uneasy, for the 
reply of Sylvester Berkley would soon 
arrive and put an official seal upon my 

78 




THE REGISTEK. 

standing. It occurred to me, however, 
that I was a traveler accompanied by no 
other baggage than a tin box and an 
umbrella, and introduced by a coach- 
man who had no reason whatever for 
forming lofty notions of my respectabil- 
ity. The landlady, whom I had scarce- 
ly seen on my arrival, was pretty, neat 
and quick, and an argument suggested 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



79 



itself that seemed adapted to her sta- 
tion and habits. I was base enough to 
take out my watch, a very fine Poitevin, 
and make an advertisement of that 
pledge under pretence of comparing 
time with the mantel-clock. This pre- 
cious manoeuvre appeared quite suc- 
cessful. 

Very soon my ideas of apprehension 
and defiance were followed by other 
thoughts of a very different kind. The 
expression of the youthful housekeeper 
was not only softened in continuing to 
watch me, but it took on a look of great 
kindness and good- humor — a look that 
the finest watch in the world would never 
have inspired. On my own side I fur- 
tively examined this gentle yet scruti- 
nizing physiognomy. Surely those gen- 
tle glances and my own faded old eyes 
were not entire strangers. 

When Winckelmann was filling the 
villa Albani with antiques, it often hap- 
pened to him to clasp a fair Greek head 
in his arms and go pottering along from 
torso to torso till he could find a shoul- 
der fit to support his lovely burden. 
Such was my exercise with this pleasant 
head in its neat cambric cap ; but in 
place of consulting my memory with the 
proper coolness, I am afraid I question- 
ed my heart. 

Immediately after the coffee my pretty 
hostess, passing my chair, with a quick 
motion in going out made me a slight 
gesture. I followed her into a small 
office or ante-chamber adjoining. The 
furniture was very simple ; the indicator, 
with a figure for every bell, decorated 
the wall in its cherry-wood frame ; the 
keys, hanging aslant in rows, like points 
of interrogation in a letter of Sevigne's, 
formed a corresponding ornament ; and 
a row of registers on the desk completed 
the furniture. One of these books she 
drew forward, opened and presented for 
my signature, still flashing over my face 
that intent but benevolent glance. 

"Monsieur, have the goodness to in- 
scribe your name, the place you came 
from, and that of your destination." 

I took the pen, and, with the air of 
complying exactly and courteously with 
her demand, folded the quill into three 



or four lengths, and placed it weltering 
in ink within my waistcoat pocket. I 
was looking intently into my hostess's 
face. 

I think no American can observe with- 
out peculiar complacency the neat arti- 
san ne's cap on the brows of a respectable 
young Frenchwoman. This cap is made 
of some opaque white substance, tender 
yet solid, and the theory of its existence 
is that it should be stainless and incapa- 
ble of disturbance. It is the badge of 
an order, the sign of unpretending in- 
dustry. The personage who wears it 
does not propose to look like a " dame :" 
she contentedly crowns herself with the 
tiara of her rank. Long generations of 
unaspiring humility have bequeathed her 
this soft and candid sign of distinction : 
as her turn comes in the line of inherit- 
ance she spends her life in keeping un- 
sullied its difficult purity, and she will 
leave to her daughters the critical task of 
its equipoise. If she soils or rumples or 
tears it, she descends in her little scale of 
dignities and becomes an ouvriere. If 
she loses it, she is unclassed entirely, and 
enters the half-world. The porter's wife 
with her dubious mob-cap, and the hard, 
flaunting grisette with her melancholy 
feathers and determined chapeau, are 
equally removed from the white cap of 
the "young person." To maintain it in 
its vestal candor and proud sincerity is 
not always an easy task in a land where 
every careless student and idle noble- 
man is eager to tumble it with his fingers 
or to pin among its frills the blossom 
named love-in-idleness : Mimi Pinson 
has to wear her cap very close to her 
wise little head. To herself and to those 
among whom she moves nothing per- 
haps seems more natural than the suc- 
cessful carriage of this white emblem, 
triumphantly borne from age to age 
above the dust of labor and in the face 
of all kinds of temptation ; but to the 
republican from beyond the seas it is a 
kind of sacred relic. The Yankee who 
knows only the forlorn aureoles of wire 
and greased gauze surrounding the saint- 
ed heads of Lowell factory- girls, and the 
frowsy ones of New York bookbinders, 
is struck by the artisanne cap as by 



So 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



something exquisitely fresh, proud and 
truthful. 

My landlady's cap was as far removed 
from pretence as from vulgarity. Her 
hair was brown, smooth, old-fashioned 
and nun-like. I looked at her hand, 
which, having replaced the pen, was in- 
viting me with a gesture of its handsome 
squared fingers to contribute my auto- 
graph. I made my note, pausing 
often to look up at my beautiful 
writing - mistress : " Paul Flem- 
ming, American : from Paris to 
Marly — by way of the Rhine." 

I had not finished, when, lower- 
ing her pretty head to scrutinize 
my crabbed handwriting, she cried, 
" It is certainly he, the americain- 
flamand ! I was certain I could 
not be mistaken." 

" Do you know me then, ma- 
dame ?" 

" Do I know you ? And you, do 
you not recognize me ?" 

" I protest, madame, my mem- 
ory for faces is shocking; and, 
though there are few in the world 
comparable with yours — " 

She interrupted me with a ges- 
ture too familiar to be mistaken. A 
tumbler was on the desk filled with 
goose-quills. Taking this up like a bou- 
quet, and stretching it out at arm's 
length to an imaginary passer-by, she 
sang, with a mischievous professional 
brio, " Fresh roses to-day, all fresh ! 
White lilacs for the bride, and lilies for 
the holy altar ! pinks for the button of 
the young man who thinks himself hand- 
some. Who buys my bluets, my paque- 
rettes, my marguerites, my pensees ?" 

It was strangely like something I well 
knew, yet my mind, confused with the 
baggage of unexpected travel, refused 
to throw a clear light over this fascina- 
ting rencounter. 

The little landlady threw her head back 
to laugh, and I saw a small rose-colored 
tongue surrounded with two strings of 
pearls : ' ' Very well, Monsieur Flemming ! 
Have you forgotten the two chickens?" 

It was the exclamation by which, in his 
neat tavern, I had recognized my brave 
old friend Joliet : it was impossible, by 



the same shibboleth, to refuse longer an 
acquaintance with his daughter. 

My entertainer, in fact, was no other 
than Francine Joliet, grown from a little 
female stripling into a distracting pat- 
tern of a woman. Twelve years had 
never thrown more fortunate changes 
over a growing human flower. 

The acquaintance being thus renew- 




A VIRTUOSO. 



ed, I could not but remember my last 
conversation with Joliet — his way of ac- 
quainting me with her absence from 
home, his mention of her godmother in 
Brussels, and his strange reticence as I 
pressed the subject. A slight chill, ow- 
ing perhaps to the undue warmth of my 
admiration for this delicate creature, fell 
over my first cordiality. I asked a 
question or two, assuming a kind, elder- 
ly type of interest : " How do you find 
yourself here in Carlsruhe ? Are you 
satisfactorily placed?" 

"As well as possible, dear M. Flem- 
ming. I am a bird in its nest." 

"Mated, no doubt, my dear?" 

"No." 

"You are not a widow, I hope, my 
poor little Francine ?" 

"No." She blushed, as if she had 
not been pretty enough before. 

"They call you madame, you see." 

"A mistress of a hotel, that is the 
usual title. Is it not the custom among 
the Indians of America?" 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



8l 



"The godmother who took care of 
you — you perceive how well I know 
your biography, my child — is she dead, 
then ?" 

" No, thank Heaven ! She is quite 
well." 

" She is doubtless now living in Carls- 
ruhe ?" 

"No, at Brussels." 

"Then why are you here? why have 
you quitted so kind a friend ?" 

My catechism, growing thus more and 
more brutal, might have been prolonged 
until bedtime, but on the arrival of a 
new traveler she left me there, with a 
pen in my hand and a quantity of de- 
licious cobwebs in my head, saying gen- 
tly, " I will see you this evening, kind 
friend." 

The same evening, after a botanizing 
stroll in the adjoining wood — a treat that 
my tin box and I had promised each 
other — I found myself again with Fran- 
cine. Full of curiosity as I was con- 
cerning her adventures, I determined 
that she should direct the conversation 
herself, and take her own pretty time 
to tell the more personal parts of the 
story. 

The stage grisette is perpetually ex- 
ploring the pockets of her apron. Fran- 
cine, who wore a roundabout apron of 
a white and crackling nature, adorned 
her conversation by attending to the 
hem of hers. When she asked about 
my last interview with her father, she 
ironed that hem with the nail of her rosy 
little thumb ; when she fell into reminis- 
cences of her mother, she smoothed the 
apron respectfully and sadly ; when she 
proposed a question or a doubt, she ex- 
tracted little threads from the seam : at 
last, perfectly satisfied with the apron, 
she laid her two small hands in each 
other on its dainty snow-bank, and re- 
signed herself to a perfect torrent of re- 
marks about the horse, the van, the little 
cabin among the roses, the small one- 
eyed dog and the two chickens. Con- 
versation, a thing which is manufactured 
by an American girl, is a thing which 
takes possession of a French girl. 

All the while I remained uninstructed 
as to why my little Francine had left her 
6 



protectress, why she was keeping house 
at Carlsruhe, and on what understand- 
ing her customers called her madame. 

I was obliged to take next day a long 
alterative excursion among the trees 
of the Haardtwald : in fact, her gentle 
warmth, her freshness, her nattiness, the 
very protection she shed over me, were 
working sad mischief to my peace of 
mind. I came upon an old shepherd, 
who, with his music-book thrown into a 
bush in front of him, was leaning back 
against a tree and drawing sweet sounds 
out of a cornet-a-piston. 

"Even so," I said, "did Stark the 
Viking hear the notes of the enchanted 
horn teaching every tree he came to the 
echo of his true-love's name." 

But the churlish shepherd, the moment 
he caught sight of me, put up his pipe, 
whistled to his dogs and rej oined the flock. 
I was dissatisfied with his unsocial re- 
treat. I felt, with renewed force, that a 
note was lacking to the full harmony of 
my life, and I threw myself upon a bank. 
I tried not to see the artificial roads of 
the forest, alive with city carriages. I 
believed myself lost in a primeval wood, 
and I examined the state of my heart. 
I perceived with concern that that organ 
was still lacerated. The languid, mu- 
sical pageant of my youth streamed 
toward me again through the leafy aisles, 
and I remembered my high aspirings, 
my poems, my ideals : the floating vision 
of a Dark Ladye passed or looked up 
at me through the broken waves of Ob- 
livion ; she listened to my rhapsodies 
with the old puzzling silence ; she con- 
fided to me certain Sibylline leaves out 
of her diary ; then she receded, cold and 
unresponsive, a statue cut out of a shad- 
ow. I was obliged to untie my cravat. 
Finally, I fell asleep and dreamed of 
Mary Ashburton crowned with the neat 
workwoman's cap of Francine Joliet. I 
returned to dinner considerably exalted, 
and just touched with rheumatism. 

The soup was glacial, the roast was 
steaming, the conversation was geo- 
graphical. " Pray, M. Flemming," said 
my neighbor (he had been stealing a 
look at the register of visitors' names), 
"can cattle be wintered out of doors as 



82 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



far north as Pennsylvania, or only up to 
Virginia?" 

"Pray," said another, "is not New 
York situated between the North River 
and the Hudson ?" 

The prayer of a third made itself au- 
dible : " Ought we to say * Delightful Wy- 
oming,' after Campbell, or Wyoming ?" 



"We ought to eat with thankfulness 
the good things set before us," I replied, 
with some presence of mind. " Excuse 
me, gentlemen," I added, to carry off 
my vivacity, " but I think informing con- 
versation is a bore until after the nuts 
and raisins. A Danish proverb says 
that he who knows what he is saying at 




DELIGHTS OF THE VEKLOBTEN. 



a feast has but poor comprehension of 
what he is eating. On my way hither, 
breakfasting at Strasburg, I enjoyed a 
lesson in geography, and I aver that 
though the lesson was elementary, I 
breakfasted very badly." 

"Who was the teacher?" asked the 
explorer of Wyoming, a German, in the 
tone of a man to whom no professor of 
Geography could properly be a stranger. 



with 



"The teacher," I answered 
smile, "was one Fortnoye — " 

I did not finish my sentence. At that 
name, Fortnoye, a kind of electric move- 
ment was communicated around the 
board. Every eye sought the face of 
Francine, who, troubled and confused, 
fell upon the cutlet placed before her and 
cut it feverishly into flinders. Evidently 
there was a secret thereabouts. When 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



83 



coffee was on, I applied myself to satis- 
fying the topographic doubts of my neigh- 
bors, but the name of the geographical 
professor was approached no more. 

When dinner was over, and only two 
stranded Belgians remained at table, 
discussing whether the Falls of Niagara 
plunge from the United States into Can- 
ada, or from Canada into the United 
States, I stole into the narrow office, be- 
lieving I should see Francine. 

She was not there, but the register was 



lying on the desk. I fell to turning the 
leaves over furiously : I felt that I was 
on the trail of Fortnoye. I was not long 
in amassing a quantity of discoveries. 
Going back to the previous year, I found 
the signature of Fortnoye in March and 
April ; in July and September, Fortnoye 
bound up and down the Rhine ; in the 
depth of the winter, Monsieur Tonson- 
Fortnoye come again ! Evidently one 
of the most frequent guests of my delicate 
Francine was the interpreter of Cosmos 




THE CHURCHYARD LOVER. 



in Strasburg, the white-bearded mystifier 
of the champagne-cellar, the finest sing- 
ing-voice in Epernay. 

Toward ten o'clock, as I paced the 
little grove called the Oak Wood, I saw 
at the miniature lake four persons, who 
were regaining the bank after trying to 
detach the little boat moored by the 
shore. They were just the four from our 
social table with whom I best agreed. I 
joined the party, and, hooking now a 
friendly arm to the elbow of one, now 
to that of another, I soon obtained all 
they had to communicate on the subject 
which occupied my mind. Each knew 
Fortnoye intimately : the result of my 
quadratic amounted to the following : 

First. Fortnoye, educated at the Poly- 



technic School in Paris, is a man of 
grave character and profound learning. 

Second. Fortnoye is a roysterer, latter- 
ly occupied in extending the connection 
of a champagne-house at Epernay. He 
is a Bohemian, even a poet: he can 
rhyme, but strictly in the interests of 
commerce — he composes only drinking- 
songs. 

Third. Fortnoye is an exploded specu- 
lator, dismissed from the French Board : 
obliged to beat a retreat to Belgium, he 
soon found himself in Baden, where he 
had good luck at the green table shortly 
before the war. 

Fourth, and last. (This was from the 
man of Wyoming.) Fortnoye only re- 
treated to Belgium as a refuge for his 



84 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



demagogic opinions. He belongs to the 
innermost circle of the Commune and to 
all the French and Italian secret asso- 
ciations. He is represented in the back- 
ground of several of Courbet's pictures. 
He has been everywhere : in Italy he 
joined the society of the Mary Anne, 
where he met the celebrated Lothair. 
This order has a branch called 
the Society of Pure Illumination. |||| 
If he has liberty to return into |j I 
France, it is because he is con- 
nected with the detective police. 

The information, extensive as 
it was, did not altogether satisfy 
me. I made little of the incon- 
sistencies betrayed by the various 
counsels of the Areopagus, but I 
closed the whole solemnity with 
one crucial interrogatory : "What 
the dickens does Fortnoye come 
prowling around Francine Joliet's 
house for ?" 

The answer was not calculated 
to please me : "She is young and 
attractive : Fortnoye advanced 
the funds to set her up in the 
house." 

But my morose thoughts were 
distracted by the scene around 
us. The moon burst up above 
the trees of the Oak Wood — a fine 
ample German moon, like a Di- 
ana of Rubens. Close to our sides 
passed numerous young couples, 
holding hands, clasping waists, chatter- 
ing gayly, or walking in silence with a 
blonde head laid on a burly shoulder. 
One of my companions pointed out a 
specially stalwart and graceful young 
apprentice, whose elbow, supported on 
a rustic bench, was bent around a mass 
of beautiful golden hair. 

"An eligible verlobter" said he. 

I thought of Perrette and the tall young 
man who had helped pull her milk-cart. 
My friend continued: "Betrothal here- 
abouts is a serious institution. The girl 
who loses her verlobter becomes a widow. 
Woe betide her if she dreams of replacing 
him too early ! She will find herself 
followed by ill looks and contemptuous 
tongues : she even runs the risk of hav- 
ing nobody to marry better than a dead 



man, if we may believe the history of 
Bettina of Ettlingen." 

"The history of Bettina of Ettlingen ? 
That sounds like the title to a ballad." 

" It is a recent history, which you 
would take for a legend of the twelfth 
century." 

I cannot help it. In face of that word 




ON THE FIRST STEP. 



legend my mind stops and stares rigidly 
like a pointer dog. The moment was 
favorable for a good story : the sky was 
covered with flocked clouds, behind 
which the ample German moon, shorn 
of half its brightness, took suddenly the 
pale gilded tint of sauerkraut. The 
wandering lovers, half effaced in the 
gloom, looked like straying shades in 
an Elysium. 

" Ettlingen is between Carlsruhe and 
Rastadt, an hour's walking as you go to 
Kehl. The flowers grow there without 
thinking about it, and sow their own 
seed. It is therefore a simple thing to 
be a gardener, and Bettina's father, the 
florist, attended entirely to his pipe, 
leaving the cares of business to his ap- 
prentice, whose name was Nature. Bet- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



85 



tin a, as became the daughter of a gar- 
dener, was a kind of rose : Wilhelm, the 
baker's young man, would have thrown 
himself into the furnace for her. But 
there came along Fritz, the dyer, who 
had been in France and who wore 
gloves. She continued a while to prom- 
enade with Wilhelm under the chestnut 
trees which surround the fortifications of 
Ettlingen, but one night she suddenly 
withdrew her hand : ' You had better 
find a nicer girl than I am : I do not feel 
that I could make you happy.' Wil- 
helm disappeared from the country. His 
departure, which was the talk of Ettlin- 
gen, caused Bettina more remorse than 
regret. For six months she shut herself 
up: then, hearing nothing of her lover, 



she reappeared shyly on the promenade, 
divested of rings, ear-drops and orna- 
ments. The beautiful Fritz, in his love- 
liest gloves, intercepted her beneath the 
chestnuts, and, armed with her father's 
consent, proposed himself for her ver- 
lobter. 

'" Not yet,' she answered : ' wait till I 
wear my flowers again.' 

" In Germany, as in Switzerland and 
Italy, natural flowers are indispensable 
to a young girl's toilet. To appear at 
an assembly without a blooming tuft at 
the corsage or in the hair is to indicate 
that the family is in mourning, the moth- 
er sick or the lover conscripted. 

" With an exquisite natural sense, Bet- 
tina, daughter of a gardener, would never 




THE LEGAL PROFESSION AND PROFESSION OF FRIENDSHIP. 



wear any flowers but wild ones. About 
this time there was a grand fair at Dur- 
lach : almost all Ettlingen went there, 
and Bettina too, but as spectatress only, 
and without her flowers. 

" The dances which animated the others 
made her sad. She left the ball and 
wandered on the hillside. There, be- 
neath the hedge of a sunken road, she 
recognized her beauteous Fritz. Poor 
Fritz ! he was refusing himself the pleas- 
ure of the dance which he might not 
partake with her. Ah, the time for tem- 
porizing is over ! Bettina determines 
that to-day, in the eyes of every one, they 
shall dance together, and he shall be 
recognized as her verlobter. She looks 
hastily around for flowers. The hill is 
bare, the road is stony : an enclosure at 
the left offers some promise, and Bettina 
enters. 

" It was a cemetery. Animated with 



her new resolve, she thought little of the 
profanation, and crowned herself with 
flowers from the nearest grave. In an 
hour the villagers from Ettlingen saw 
her leaning on Fritz's shoulder in the 
waltz. That night the shade of Wilhelm 
stood at her bed-head : ' You have ac- 
cepted the flowers growing on my grave 
and nourished from my heart. I am 
once more your verlobter.' 

" Next day Fritz came, radiant, with a 
silver engagement-ring, which he was to 
exchange for that on Bettina's finger, 
returned by Wilhelm at his departure. 
But the ring was gone. At night Wil- 
helm reappeared, and showed the ring 
on his finger. Some time passed, and 
Bettina lost a good part of her beauty, 
distracted as she was between the laugh- 
ing Fritz in the daytime and the pale 
Wilhelm at night. She was a sensible 
girl, however, and persuaded herself, 



86 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



with Fritz's assistance, that the vision 
was created by a disordered fancy. But 
she caused inquiry to be made about the 
grave in the cemetery at Durlach : the 
answer came : ' Under the first stone 
in the line at the right of the gate lies 
the body of Wilhelm Haussbach of Ett- 
lingen, where he followed the trade of 
baker.' 

"Then she knew that she had robbed 
her lover's grave to adorn herself for a 
new verlobter. After this the ghost of 
Wilhelm began to invade her prome- 
nades with Fritz, and she walked even- 
ing* after evening beneath the chestnuts 
between her two lovers. 

"The gardener's daughter never look- 
ed fairer than on her wedding - day. 
Armed with all her resolution, and filled 
with love for Fritz, she presented herself 
at the altar. The priest began to recite 
the sacramental words, when he came 
to a pause at the sight of Bettina, pale 
and wild-eyed, shivering convulsively 
in her bridal draperies. 

" Wilhelm was again at her side, kneel- 
ing on the right, as Fritz on the left. He 
was in bridegroom's habit, and he offer- 
ed a bouquet of graveyard-flowers — the 
white immortelle and the forget-me-not. 
When Fritz rose and put the ring on 
her finger she felt an icy hand draw the 
token off and replace it by another. At 
this, overcome with terror, and making 
a wild gesture of rejection both to right 
and left, she ran shrieking out of the 
church. 

" Such is the true and authentic story 
of Bettina," concluded my narrator. 
" You may see Bettina any day at Ettlin- 
gen, a yellow old maid forty years of 
age. Every Sunday she goes to mass 
at Durlach, where she employs the rest 
of the day in tending flowers on a grave, 
the first grave in the line to the right of 
the gateway." 

I returned to the house with this grim 
and tender little idyll crooning through 
my brains. I took my key and bed- 
candle, and asked the porter if a letter 
had arrived for me from Sylvester Berk- 
ley. Not a line ! This silence became 
inconvenient. Not only did I rely upon 




Berkley for my passport, the certificate 
of my character, but likewise for the 
revictualing of my purse. As I passed 
the small throne - room of Francine, 
where she sat vis-a-vis with all her keys 
and bells, a light, a presence, an ami- 
cable little nod informed me that a friend 
was there for me, and sent a bath of 
warm and comfortable emotion all over 
my poor old heart. 

It was late. Francine, at a little velvet 
account - book, 
was executing 
some fairy-like 
and poetical 
arithmetic in 
purple ink. I 
had the pleas- 
ure , before a 
half hour had 
passed, of mak- 
ing her commit 
more than one effusion. 

error in her col- 
umns, do violet violence to the neatness 
of her book, and adorn her thumb-nail 
with a comical tiny silhouette. My gossip, 
which had this encouraging and proud 
effect, was commenced easily upon fa- 
miliar subjects, such as the old rose- 
garden and the chickens, but branched 
imperceptibly into more personal con- 
fidences. I found myself growing 
strangely confidential. Soon I had 
sketched for Francine my life of opulent 
loneliness, my cook and my old valet, 
my philosopher's den at Marly, my neg- 
ligent existence at Paris, without family, 
country or obligations. 

Her good gray eyes were swimming 
with tears, I thought. With a look of 
perfect natural sweetness she said, "To 
live alone and far from kin and father- 
land, that is not amusing. It is like one 
of the small straight sticks of rose my 
father would take and plant in the sand 
in a far-away little red pot." 

A delicious vignette, I confess, began 
to be outlined in my fancy. I cannot 
describe it, but I know Francine was in 
the middle repairing a stocking, while 
my own books and geographical notes, 
in a state of dustlessness they had nevei 
known actually, formed a brown bower 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



8? 




around her. Somewhere near, in an 
old secretary or in a grave, was buried 
the ideal of an earlier, haughtier love, 
wrapped up in a stolen ribbon or pressed 
in a book. 

She continued simply, " 1 am very 
much alone myself. Without the visits 
of Monsieur Fortnoye I should be dead 
of ennui. I am so glad to find you 
know him, monsieur!'' 

This jarred upon me more than I can 
say. I assumed, as 
one can at my age, 
an air of parental be- 
nevolence, in which I 
administered my dis- 
satisfaction : " Fort- 
noye is a roysterer, 
a squanderer, a 
wanderer and a fte- 
troleur. At your age, 
my child, you are 
really imprudent." 

"He is a little wild, 
but he is young him- 
self. And bo good, 
so generous, so kind ! 
I owe him every- 
thing." 
"On what conditions?" said I, more 
severely perhaps than I meant. "Your 
relations, my daughter, are not very 
clear. Is he then your verlobter?" 

She looked at me with an expression 
of stupefaction, then buried her face in 
her hands : " He my intended ! Has he 
ever dreamed of such a thing ? Am I 
not a poor flower-girl ?" 

And she was sobbing through her 
ringers. 

My nights were sweet at Carlsruhe. 
My slumber was ushered in with those 
delicious dream-sketches that lend their 
grace to folly. Each morning I won- 
dered what surprise the day would ar- 
range for me. 

The little wood was hidden from my 
window by an early fog : the birds were 
silent. I was meditating on my singular 
position, in pawn as it were under the 
care of Joliet's good daughter, when I 
heard my name pronounced at the bot- 
tom of the stairs. It was Sylvester 
Berkley. 



P3.- 



SELF-CONTROL. 



The briskness of our friendships de- 
pends on the time when — the place 
where. To men in prison a familiar face 
is the next thing to liberty. 

Some years ago I had an absurd dis- 
pute with a neighbor about a party-wall 
at Passy, and was obliged to go to the 
Palace of Justice at ten every morning 
for a week. My forced intercourse with 
those solemn birds in black plumage 
had 'a singular effect on me. While 
among them I felt as if cut off from my 
species, and visiting with Gulliver some 
dreadful island peopled with mere alle- 
gories. As the time passed I grew worse : 
I dragged myself to the Cite with horror, 
and before returning home was always 
obliged to wash out my brains by a short 
stroll in Notre Dame or amongst the fine 
glass of the Sainte Chapelle. One day, 
pacing the pale and shuffling corridors 
of the palace, waiting for an unpunctual 
lawyer, and regarding the gowns and 
caps around me with insupportable hate, 
at the turning of a passage — oh happi- 
ness ! — a face was revealed in the dis- 
tance, the face of a friend, the face of 
an old neighbor. At the bright appari- 
tion I made an involuntary sign of joy : 
the owner of the face seemed no less 
pleased. We walked toward each other, 
our hands expanded. All of a sudden 
a doubt seemed to strike us both at the 
same moment : he slackened his pace, 
I slackened mine. We met : we had 
never done so before. It was a little 
mistake. We saluted each other slight- 
ly and gravely, and separated once 
more, as wise in our looks as that irre- 
proachable hero who, after marching 
up the hill with his men, pocketed his 
thoughts and marched down again. 

My meeting with Berkley Junior was 
not precisely similar, but connected with 
the same feelings and associations. I 
dashed down four steps at a time, pre- 
cipitated myself on him like a bird of 
prey, and wrung his hands again and 
again with fondest violence. 

Now, up to that date my relations 
with Sylvester Berkley had been of a 
frigid and formal description. I had 
met him two or three times with his 
hearty old relation, and had borne away 



s$ 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



the distinct impression that he was a 
prig. While the uncle would breakfast 
in his tub, like Diogenes, off simple 
bones and cutlets, Sylvester ate some 
sort of a mash made of bruised oats : 
while the nephew made an untenable 
pretension to family honors, the elder 
talked familiarly of the porcelain trade, 
freely alluding to the youth as a piece 
of precious Sevres that had cracked. 

He met my advances with a calmness, 
imprinted with astonishment, that re- 
called me to myself. Against such a 
refrigerator my heart and fancy recover- 
ed their proper level : I had been caress- 
ing an iceberg in a white cravat. I ex- 
amined my emotions, and found, to my 
shame, that my warmth had a selfish 
origin in the fact that I was alone in 
Carlsruhe, greatly in need of a passport 
and a purse. 

" Do you intend shortly to quit the 
archducal seat?" asked Sylvester, by 
way of an agreeable remark. 

" I have the strongest obligations to 
be at home," I returned. " I only await 
your kind assistance about my pass- 
port." 

" It is expected at the office, but I fear 
it will not be received in time for you to 
take the next train. I fear we shall be 
obliged to keep you with us until thirty 
minutes past one." 

He conferred on me, with his neck 
and his hand, a salute which had the 
effect of being made from a distant win- 
dow. Then he departed. 

To ask such a man for money was not 
easy. I dressed myself and marched 
in great haste to the gay quarter of the 
town, having made up my mind to de- 
pend on the mercies of the chief jeweler 
and the merits of my Poitevin watch. 
It had cost a thousand francs, and would 
surely, after many a service rendered, 
help me now to regain my home. 

Another disappointment — not a pawn- 
broker to be found in Carlsruhe ! I was 
ready to look upon myself as a fixture in 
the town, when a brilliant idea flashed 
upon me. One of my neighbors at table 
was transportation-agent at the railway 
depot. What so opportune for me as a 
credit on the railway company ? With 



his recommendation my watch would 
surely be security enough. 

Delighted with the thought, and with 
my own cleverness in originating it, I 
made briskly for the Ettlingen Gate, be- 
fore which the road passes. Glancing 
at the clock on the depot, I regulated 
first my watch by the time of the place, 
in order that no doubt might be cast on 




LOSING TIME. 



its perfect regularity. I was holding it 
in my hand, my eyes still riveted on the 
great clock, as I stepped over the near- 
est rails. A shout, mixed with impreca- 
tions, was audible. My coat was seized 
by a vigorous fist, I was rudely pushed, 
my watch escaped, and the train from 
Frankfort, which was just entering the 
depot, only rendered it to my hands 
crushed, peeled and pounded. Instead 
of a thousand francs, my old friend would 
hardly bring five dollars. 

After such a catastrophe what remain- 
ed for me to do ? Evidently to humble 
my pride and beg an obolus of young 
Berkley. I represented to myself that 
the victory over my own false shame 
was worth many watches, and I began 
to compose a little speech intended for 
his ear, in which I compared myself to 
Dante at the convent door. 

I found him in his office clasping a 
hand-valise. "I am about to go away 
by your train," he said, without waiting 
for me to speak or remarking my shab- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



89 



by-genteel expression of heroism. He 
added, as he handed me a great seal- 
ed envelope, "There is your passport. 
Nothing imperative requires my stay 
here : I shall accompany you, then, as 
far as the station of Oos, and while you 
are continuing your route toward your 
beloved metropolis, I will go and finish 
my leave of absence at Baden-Baden, 




where I am claimed by certain condi- 
tions of my liver." 

I was so nervous and uncertain of 
myself that this little change in the hori- 
zon upset me completely. For the life 
of me I could not, at that moment, and 
at the risk of seeing him drop his bag 
and rain its contents over the official 
courtyard, rehearse my awkward acci- 



dent and disreputable beggary. On the 
other hand, it was much to gain a friend- 
ly companion and pass arm-in-arm with 
him to the ticket- office. Leaving every 
other plan uncertain, I determined to 
start from Carlsruhe in his diplomatic 
shadow. 

I dashed with surprising agility into the 
house to ask for my account with Fran- 
cine. I was about to 
explain that I would 
quickly settle with 
her from Paris, when 
the thoughtful little 
woman anticipated 
me. "Monsieur 
Flemming," she 
said, with her sweet 
supplicating air,"you 
left the city without 
meaning it. If you 
would like a little 
advance, monsieur, 
I am quite well sup- 
plied just now. Dis- 
pose of me : I shall 
be so thankful !" 

The money of 
Fortnoye! the 
thought was impos- 
sible. It was impos- 
sible to resist taking 
her bright brown 
head between my 
hands and secreting 
a kiss somewhere in 
the laminations of 
the artisanne cap. 

" Dear infant ! I 
shall be an unhappy 
old fellow if I do not 
see you again very 
soon." 

— And I was off, 
dragged by those 
obligations of the time-table which have 
no tenderness toward human sentiment. 
At one o'clock I was at the railway 
with Sylvester. I was uncertain of my 
plans, and the confusion of the depot 
added nothing to the clearness inside 
my head. Berkley advanced first to the 
ticket - seller's window. "A first-class 
place for Baden-Baden," said he. 



9° 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



XT? 



tMMi 



% 



" How many ?" briskly asked the clerk, seeing us 
together. 

At that moment Sylvester heard a ghostly voice 
at his ear: "You may get a couple." The voice 
was mine. 

Berkley got them and paid. I had reflected 
that my letter of credit from Munroe & Co. would 
undoubtedly be drawn on Baden-Baden, and had 
suddenly taken a resolution to try the effect of the 
springs on my unfortunate stoutness. 

We got down at the Gasthaus zum Hirsch, but I 
had already sold the ruins of my chronometer, and 
was twenty-five francs the richer for the transaction. 

I cannot call Baden-Baden a city : it is a stage. 
It is a perpetually set scene for light opera. Ev- 
erything seems dressed up and artificial, and meant 
to be viewed, as it were, in the glare of the foot- 
lights. But instead of the shepherds in white satin 
who ought to be the performers in this ingenious 
theatre, it is the unaccustomed stranger who is 
forced into the position of actor. As he toils up 
the steep and slovenly streets, faced with shabby 
buildings that crack and blacken behind their ill- 
adjusted fronts of stucco and distemper, he cheap- 
ens rapidly in his own view : he feels painfully like 
the hapless supernumerary whom he has seen 
mounting an obvious step-ladder behind a screen 
of rock-work on his way to a wedding rn the chapel 
or a coronation in the Capitol. The difference is, 
that here the permission to play his role is paid for 
by the performer. 

But I, as I sat hugging my knee in the hotel bed- 
room, was possessed by loftier feelings. If there is 
one faculty which I can fairly extol in myself, it is 
that of displaying true sentiment in false situations. 
My thoughts, with incredible agility, went back to 
Francine. A knock came at the door, and my 
emotions received a chill : my visitor could be 
none but Berkley, in whose face I should see a 
reminder that I owed him for my car-fare. 

In place of frigid politeness, however, the diplo- 
matist wore all that he knew of good-fellowship 
and Bohemianism. He was now clad in tourists' 
plaid, and stood upon soles half an inch thick — a 
true Englishman on his travels. 

"Come, old boy!" — old boy, indeed! — "you must 
taste the pleasures of Baden- Baden : it is but four 
o'clock, and we can see the Trinkhalle, the Conver- 
sations- Haus, and plenty besides before dinner. Is 
there any place in particular where you would like 
to go ?" 

I looked solemnly at him. "I would fain visit the Alt-Schloss," I said. 

"With all my heart!" replied Sylvester, tapping his legs and admiring his boots. 
This unpromising comrade was wearing better than I expected. 



1* ' ; 



\ 



THE WOOD-PATH. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




SCENE OF MA TTHISSON'S POEM IMITATING GRAY'S " ELEGY. 



"Shall we have a carriage?" he pur- 
sued. At this question my face con- 
tracted as by the effect of a nervous 
attack. I thought of the few pence I 
possessed. I assumed the determined 
pedestrian. 

" For shame !" I cried : " it is but three 
miles. Where are your tourist muscles ? 
I should like to walk." 

"Nothing simpler," said the man of 
facile views : "we shall do it within the 
hour." 



I breathed again. 




WINE OK BEEK 



We set off. We 
had before us 
cliffs and hills, 
with small 
Gothic towers 
printed on the 
blue of the sky ; 
but the moun- 
tain - path be- 
neath our steps 
was sanded, 
graveled, pack- 
ed, rolled, weed- 
ed, and pro- 
vided with co- 
quettish sofas at 



every hundred steps. I, who happened 
that afternoon to feel the emotions of 
Manfred, would gladly have exchanged 
these detestable conveniences for preci- 
pices, storms and eagles. 

"How ridiculous," I said with a little 
temper, "to go to a ruin by way of the 
boulevards !" 

"Ah," said my companion of com- 
plaisant manners, "you like Nature ? It 
is but the choosing." 

And Berkley, perfectly acquainted 
with the locality, directed our steps into 
a narrow path hardly traced through the 
woods. Here at least were flowers and 
grass and sylvan shadows. No sooner 
did I smell the balm of the pine trees 
than my heart resigned itself, with ex- 
quisite indecision, to the thoughts of 
Francine Joliet and the memories of 
Mary Ashburton. I glanced at Berk- 
ley : he seemed, in Scotch clothes, a 
little less impenetrable than he had 
appeared in white cravat and dress- 
gloves. I cannot restrain my confi- 
dences when a man is near me : I but- 
tonholed Sylvester, and I made the 
plunge. " I used to talk of the Alt- 



9 2 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



with one whom 



ith my late 



Schloss," I murmured, 
I have lost." 

"Ah, I comprehend 
uncle, perhaps." 

"No, sir, not with any cynic in a tub, 
but with a maiden in her flower. It was 
one of the best points I made with Miss 
Ashburton." 

"The Alt-Schloss is 
indeed a picturesque 
construction," said the 
diplomate, by way of 
generally inviting my 
confidence. 

"We were convers- 
ing about the poems 
of Salis and Matthis- 
son," I pursued. "I 
had in my pocket a 
little translation of 
Salis's song entitled 
'The Silent Land,' 
and endeavored to 
bend the dialogue 
in a suitable direc- 
tion, but these allu- 
sions are incredibly 
hard to introduce in 
conversation, and we 
happened to stray 
upon Baden-Baden. 
I asked Miss Ashbur- 
ton if she had been 
here, and she answer- 
ed, ' Yes, the last sum- 
mer.' 'And you have 
not forgotten ?' I sug- 
gested — 'The old 
castle,' she rejoined. 
' Of course not. What 
a magnificent ruin it 
is!'" 

"What tact your 
friend displayed," 
said Berkley, "to feign utter unconscious- 
ness of the green tables, and see nothing 
but ruins in Baden-Baden !" 

" Permit me to say," I replied quickly, 
"that it is not agreeable to me to have 
that lady alluded to, however distantly, 
in connection with gambling - tables. 
The Ashburtons had been probably 
drinking the waters, for her mother 
was noticeably stout and florid. But to 



continue with the poets. I explained to 
her that the ruins of the Alt-Schloss had 
suggested to Matthisson a poem in im- 
itation of an English masterpiece. Mat- 
thisson made a study of Gray's ' Elegy,' 
and from it produced his ' Elegy on the 
Ruins of an Ancient Castle.' Miss Ash- 




ENTKANCE TO THE ALT-SCHLOSS. 



burton became nationally enthusiastic, 
and said she should like very much to 
see the poem. Her wish was usually 
my law, but the translation of the other 
song being in my pocket, I was obliged 
to palm it off upon her ; and after con- 
ceding that Matthisson had written his 
'Elegy' with unwonted inspiration, I 
sailed in upon that tide of feeling — with 
a slight inconsequence, to be sure — and 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



93 



declaimed my version from Salis. Miss 
Ashburton, sir, was obliged to turn away 
to hide her tears." 

" I used to hear from my uncle of your 
attachment," said Sylvester, with his po- 
litest air of condolence, "and I assure 
you my opinion ever has been that your 
feelings did you honor. Nothing, in my 
view, is so becoming to gray hairs and 
the evening of life as fidelity to a first 
passion." 

"Lord forgive you, Berkley!" I ex- 
claimed, startled out of all self-posses- 
sion by his impertinence. "What on 
earth do you mean ? You are complete- 
ly ignorant of what you are talking 
about. I have hardly any gray hairs, 
and some excellent constitutions are 
gray at thirty. You are partly bald 
yourself: I know it from the way you 
turn up your love-locks. And it was 
not Miss Ashburton I was talking about. 
That is, if I did 
derive my reminis- 
cences from her, it 
was with an object 
of a very different 
character at the 
end of the perspec- 
tive. I have adopt- 
ed other views ; 
that is, I have late- 
ly had presented to 




KELLNER 



my mind — " 



With these rhe- 
torical somersaults, like the flappings 
of a carp upon the straw, did I express 
the mental distractions I was suffering 
from, and the tugs at my heart respect- 
ively administered by Francine's cap- 
strings and Mary Ashburton's shadowy 
tresses. Berkley, diplomatically approv- 
ing the landscape before us, would not 
get angry, would not be insulted, and 
offered no prise to my difficult temper. 

"Tell me now, Sylvester," said I after 
a few minutes' silence. " You are young, 
yet you have seen the world. What is 
the best refuge, in your view, for a man 
of delicate sentiments and of ripe age ? 
Would you recommend such a person 
to shut himself up for ever in a hermit- 
age of musty books, and to flirt there 
eternally with the memories of his young 



loves, who are become corpulent ma- 
trons or angular maids ? Or, don't you 
think, now, that an autumnal attach- 
ment — provided some sweet and healthy 
intelligence comes in contact with his 
own — is a capital thing in its way ? The 
crackling fireside instead of the lovers' 
walk ? The perfection of rational com- 
fort subservient to, rather than domina- 
ting, his early dreams ? Respectful af- 
fection, fidelity and fondest care as the 
conditions surrounding one's character, 
and upholding it in its best symmetry ? 
Cannot the poet think better if his body 
is kept snug ? Cannot the man of feel- 
ing remember better if his slippers are 
toasted and his buttons sewed ? In fact, 
is not one's faith to a beloved ideal best 
shown by acquiring a fresh standing- 
point to see it from ?" 

"No doubt Hamlet's mother thought 
so," said Sylvester rather brutally, "and 
married King Claudius solely to bright- 
en her ideal of her first husband." A 
more appropriate remark, it seemed to 
me, might have been found to chime in 
with my speculations. " But here," pur- 
sued the statesman, compromisingly, 
"are old memories protected by modern 
conveniences. Here is the ' Repose of 
Sophie.' " 

We had mounted a terrace from whose 
eminence the whole spread of the valley 
was visible. Profanation ! No sooner 
had we attained the plateau than a cov- 
ered gallery appeared, and a Teutonic 
voice was heard with the familiar in- 
quiry, "Will the gentlemen take wine 
or beer ?" 

Was ever a man of delicacy and feel- 
ing so ruthlessly treated as I ? To be 
tempted by circumstances into pouring 
out one's most intimate confessions to an 
icy person to whom one owes money, and 
then to have even this imperfect con- 
fidence interrupted by a tavern-waiter 
in an apron ! Miserable hireling ! give 
us solitude and meditation, not beer ! 

Flying the "Repose of Sophie " with- 
out the concession of a glance, we 
mounted toward the ancient castle, 
whose ruins seemed ready to roll on us 
down the hillside. It was indeed ro- 
mantic. The wind, in plaintive, melo- 



94 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



dious tones, searched our ears as it came 
perfumed from the tufted walls, We 
penetrated through a scene of high and 
mossy rocks, bound in the lean embrace 
of knotted ivy, and finally by a dis- 
mantled postern we intruded into the 
castle. Sacrilege again ! The stone- 
masons were tranquilly working here 
and there, solidifying old ruins and very 
probably fabricating new ones. The 
wind, whose sighing we had admired, 
was the cat-like harmony of the seolian 
harps : these harps were artlessly stretch- 
ed across each of the old vaulted win- 
dows. We arrived at the high portal of 
the ancient manor, a genuine Roman 
construction of Aurelius Aquensis — a 
gateway with a round arch : it was ob- 
structed by hired cabs, by whole herds of 
venal donkeys saddled and bridled, and 
by holiday-makers of Baden in Sunday 
clothes preserved for ten or fifteen years. 
The old pile itself is transformed into a 
hostelry. Gray was wrong : the paths 
of glory lead not to the grave, but to the 
gasthaus ; and Matthisson could have 
imitated the "Elegy" about as well in 
the gaming-hall as among these rejuve- 
nated ruins. 

The modern idea of a wood is a grav- 
eled chess-board on a large scale, flood- 
ed at night with gas : the modern idea 
of a ruin is a dancing-floor, with a few 
patched arches and walls lifted between 
the wind and our nobility. We shave 
the weeds away and produce a fine Eng- 
lish turf : we root up the brambles and 
eglantines which might tear the skirts 
of the ladies. Our lovers, our poets and 
romancers must fly to distant glades if 
they would not walk in the shade of 
trees that have been transplanted. 

I was considering the sorry triumph 
of the stage-machinists of Baden-Baden, 
when Berkley, who had disappeared, 
came in sight again. Our dinner, he said, 
was ready — ready in the guards' hall. 
I retreated with a sudden cry of alarm. 
I had rather dine at the hotel; I had 
rather not dine at all ; I was not in the 
least hungry. It was the emptiness of 
my pocket that caused this sudden full- 
ness of the stomach. Berkley made 
light of my objections. 



" Listen ! You can hear from this 
mountain the dinner-bells of the city. 
We should arrive too late. Although 
you hate restored castles, you need not 
refuse to dine with me in one." 

The noble hall was a scene of vulgar 
festivity, where the ubiquitous kellner, 




TYROLEAN. 



racing to and fro with beer and plates 
of sausage, solved the problem of per- 
petual motion. It was not easy, in such 
circumstances, to maintain the flow of 
poetic association, but I accomplished 
the feat in a measure. As the shades 
of evening closed around the hill, and 
the bells of twenty dining-tables ascend- 
ed to us through the still air, I thought 
of Gray's curfew — of that glimmering 
Stoke-Pogis landscape that faded into 
immortality on his sight. I thought of 
Matthisson's " Elegy " on this forlorn old 
dandy of a castle. I thought of the 
sympathetic chest-notes with which I 
read to Mary Ashburton the " Song of 
the Silent Land." 

I thought of Francine, and of the 
condition of base terror I was in when 
I ran away from her with the man who 
momentarily represented my solvency, 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



95 



my credit and my respectability. May 
the foul fiend catch me, sweet vision, if 
I do not find thee soon again ! A Ty- 
rolean, who entered by stealth, persuaded 
a heart-rending lamentation to issue from 
his wooden trumpet : although the acid 
sounds proceeding from this terrible 
whistle set my teeth on edge and caused 
me at first to start off my seat, yet I re- 
warded him with such a competency in 
copper as made his eyes emerge from 
his face. A singing - girl and some 
blonde bouquet-sellers had equal cause 
to rejoice in my generosity. It is when 
a gentleman is landed finally on his cop- 
pers that he becomes penny-liberal. I 



glanced defiance at Berkley, my creditor, 
as I showered largess on these humble 
poets. 

We descended under the stars, and I 
began to think that illuminated gravel- 
roads were, at night, susceptible of some 
apology. We returned to the city by 
easy stages, with a halt at the " Repose 
of Sophie." At the hotel there was 
given me, re-directed in the pretty hand 
of Francine, an unlimited credit from 
Munroe & Co. on the house of Meyer in 
Baden-Baden. I was a freeman once 





zp.a.:r,t tii. 



THE SEDUCTIONS OF BADEN-BADEN. 




THE ANCIENTS AND THE NEWS. 



THE supreme delight we take in be- 
ing racked, tortured and suspended 
over chasms by the fickle tenure of a 
rotten plank is one of the most unselfish 
traits of human nature. For my part, I 
have never been so happy as when held, 
by the strong power of imagination, 
right over the depths of a mediaeval 
oubliette, at the bottom of which the 
roaring of the sea or of a brace of gor- 
96 



mandizing lions was distinctly audible. 
The first question asked by Paul Flem- 
ming of the baron of Hohenfels, when 
at Heidelberg, was one about that tra- 
dition of the castle according to which 
Louis le Debonnaire was frightened by 
an apparition of Satan and the Virgin 
into delivering up his brother Frederick 
to the two Black Knights representing 
the Vehm-Gericht. "Ha! that is grand," 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



97 



I said, inexpressibly refreshed with the 
allusion to the thrilling Vehm - Gericht. 
"Tell me the whole story quickly, for 




ELICITING TRUTH. 



1 am curious as a child." Ah ! that 
indispensable Vehmic Council — true 
grammar-school in which the genius of 
Radcliffe and Ainsworth was formed — 
was there ever a contrivance so admira- 
bly adapted for pleasantly crisping the 
scalp and icing the veins ! I am not 
ashamed to say that even in these latter 
years of mine there are certain stormy 
evenings when I draw forth the coals 
over the hearth, practice my geomancy, 
lock out all interlopers, and invoke the 
powerful Wizard of the North. He 
plunges me into a dream that is the 
very acme of sweet terror : a voluptuous 
swimming sensation overcomes me as 
my bed, in whose integrity I should else- 
where have perfect faith, sinks down, 
down, down, fathoms deep. The damps 
of dungeons are around me : around me 
also are black and awful forms, from 
one of which a solemn voice proceeds, 
asking if I know where I am. I am 
drilled in my lesson : " I believe that I 
am before the Unknown or Secret Tri- 
bunal called the Vehm-Gericht." 
"Then are you aware," answers the 
7 



judge, "that you would be safer if you 
were suspended by the hair over the 
abyss of Schaffhausen ?" 

I enjoy it immensely, for I have 
recognized the voice, slightly broken 
with inward laughter, of the Wizard 
himself. 1 know perfectly well that 
he cannot afford to lose a hero in the 
very middle of the second volume, 
and I know, too, that he is a dear 
old hypocrite of a mediaeval, with a 
mask of terror and a heart of butter. 
"Now, by my halidom !" says the 
great Vehmic Wizard in his finest 
chest tones, "mockest thou me, caitiff? 
Off with him, then, to the profoundest 
bastiles of Breisach !" 

And there I am, on a sheaf of fresh 
theatrical straw, with a bottomless 
pit in the floor, in which I can see the 
subterranean scene-shifters. And my 
name is not Paul Flemming, but Ar- 
thur Philipson, and I hear footsteps. 
They come, they come, the murder- 
ers ! O Lady of Mercy ! and O gra- 
cious Heaven ! forgive my transgres- 
sions 
proach, 
muslin, 

these things be ?" I cry fatuously; "and 
has she really the powers of an element- 
ary spirit?" And she, taking my hand, 
wafts me forth, as blissfully and easily 
as would a morning dream, into the day- 
light. 

" I knew she was coming," observes 
the Wizard at 
my elbow, 
"and that was 
the reason I 
dumped you 
there." 

When, how- 
ever, I exam- 
ined the un- 
derground 
portions of the 
Neues Schloss 
at Baden-Ba- 
den, J found 
the relics re- 
maining there endued with a ferocious 
realism that took away my confidence. 
Sylvester Berkley in evening-dress — 



! And when the footsteps ap- 
there, robed in angelic white 
is Anne of Geierstein. "Can 




KNOW THYSELF 



9 8 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



for he had some people to meet at din- 
ner — myself in my garden-cap, and a 
guide with a torch, committed ourselves 
to the exploration. We had hurriedly 
got over the examination of the palace 
for the sake of these famous sub-con- 
structions. Tis there, they say, in the 
Middle Ages sat the terrible Vigilance 
Committee called Vehmic, formerly the 
terror of Europe, and more recently the 
cause of many a melodrama and opera. 

We descended innumerable steps, 
formed of slabs of rock scarcely con- 
nected together, and worn by the steps 
of ages. Tottering or sliding under our 
feet, they threatened death for the least 
false balance. Relieved of this peril, we 
passed through ten vaults, each more 
sepulchral than the other. 

A door, made of a single stone, pre- 
sented itself. After long efforts the stiff 
portal opened — not by means of a key, 
but of powerful levers which we ourselves 
helped to move. 

We were in the grand chamber of the 
Secret Tribunal. The form of the seats 
from which the judges spoke was still 
visible on some of the stones that rose 
out of the ground. After a silent exam- 
ination, followed by a procession through 
numerous corridors, we were suddenly 
ushered into a large hall, more forbid- 
ding than all the rest. Bolts of iron, 
chains and rusty clamps adorned the 
blackened and slimy walls. "This is 
the inquisition-chamber," said the guide 
solemnly, moving his torch along the 
stones still spotted with blood : " here the 
victims, placed on the rack, were tor- 
tured with the pincers, their foreheads 




" WHEN WE SHALL MEET AT COMPT." 

compressed by a constantly narrowing 
band of iron, and their feet set on a fur- 
nace." 

I fairly choked in such an atmosphere, 
and at the presence of these visible, pal- 
pable irons rusted with blood, a cold per- 
spiration stood out on my forehead. I 
looked at Sylvester. Smiling, white-cra- 
vatted, he was kissing the pommel of his 
cane. 

"You are good-natured," he said, "to 
devote so much valuable emotion to such 
a small affair." 

"A small affair!" repeated I, pointing 
to the tortures. 

"In former times," he answered with 
the most perfect self-possession, "when 
enemies invaded the country, these big 
cellars were used to fold the sheep and 
oxen, as well as those less valuable beasts 
of burden, the women. You see the 
chains and fastenings for the cows. Up 




ROMAN CAPTIVES DELIVERED TO THE VANDAL. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



99 



to this point, dear Mr. Flemming, I have 
not contradicted your errors — you seem- 
ed to feel a need for a Vehmic Council, 
and I indulged you — but now that it has 
brought out the perspiration over your 
temples and nose, thus including you 



among the tortured, I suppress it. No 
Vehmic Council ever sat here." 

Even painful feelings are sometimes 
not without their sweetness. I felt like 
keeping mine. I observed that the mag- 
nitude of these terrible halls witnessed 




that they were constructed for some awful 
purpose. The guide, furnished only with 
the name and definition of each room, 
declined to take part in the discussion. 
After having made us pass over a little 
bridge, whose gaping planks allowed a 
damp, tomblike air to ascend to our nos- 
trils, he turned suddenly. "The oubli- 
ettes !" he said in his hollowest tones. 

I took a stone, and let it fall through 
a crack in the boards : it was ten seconds 
arriving at the bottom. 

I crossed my arms and looked firmly 
at Sylvester. "Well?" I said. 

"A well, certainly," he answered. 

I was put out at having the word thus 
taken from my mouth to my disadvantage. 



I asked the guide if he knew no story 
of the dark old times, with the name of 
some illustrious victim plunged into the 
oubliette. 

He confessed to knowing, of his own 
memory, that formerly, a long while ago, 
when he was quite young, a little dog, 
that had stolen in at the heels of its 
master, had disappeared between the 
planks of the bridge. The animal's 
name was Love. The owner was an 
Englishman, and therefore very rich. 
He offered enormous bribes for the body 
of his dog, living or dead. With the 
dog, which was got out alive, but sneez- 
ing, they brought up a kind of dust, half 
white and half red, which evidently pro- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



ceeded from human bones and weapons 
reduced to rust. 

I did not consider that the adventure 
of the aforesaid Love was tabulable in a 
class of historical events sufficiently grave 
to allow me to make a weapon of it 
against Sylvester. 

The more I studied the character of 
the latter, the more it puzzled me. With 
his correctness, his measured phrases, 
his politeness, he united a strange ob- 
stinacy and an obvious exaggeration. 
As we emerged from the dungeons of the 
Neues Schloss, our discussion still pro- 
ceeding, he combated my views with a 
vivacity and a personal strenuousness 
that surprised me. Here evidently was 
no man, like Flemming, content to hold 
his dearest opinions by a thread of fable 
or sentiment. But the trait was hardly 
noticed ere it was handsomely apologized 
for. Berkley, his own accuser, com- 
plained of a temper the reverse of dip- 
lomatic. "My poor uncle was just so," 
he observed, "and has been known to 
dance on his own chinaware like a der- 
vish. He tried cold tubs, and I am try- 
ing whey. Every one, as Socrates ob- 
serves, should know himself." 

It appeared to me that there were 
depths in Berkley which I had not sound- 
ed. I took his arm and returned with 
him to dinner. Habituated to Baden- 
Baden, the dinner was for him a con- 
tinual series of bows, compliments, send- 
ing off of brimming glasses to bowing 
and complimenting people at a distance. 
Of two especial friends of his, one was 
a German literary gentleman, so famous 
that I do not venture to mention his 
name — the other a landscape-painter. 

After dining, I, for my part, discovered 
an acquaintance, one of the disputants 
of the table at Carlsruhe. After asking 
for a few points, such as whether the St. 
Lawrence River did not keep its color 
for a long time after running into Lake 
Superior, and whether Washington Ter- 
ritory were not synonymous with the 
District of Columbia, he gave me a 
chance for a question, to hear whose an- 
swer my ears were throbbing. I asked, 
as indifferently as possible, after Francine 
Joliet. 



It appeared that since my departure 
Francine did nothing but sing from morn- 
ing till night. Exceedingly dissatisfied 
with this reply, I turned to Sylvester, who 




% 






THE CHAPEL OF THE POOR 

with his friends intended to drop in at 
the Casino of Holland, a rendezvous for 
the archaeologists and curiosity-hunters 
of the country. There is at the Casino 
a library of limited numbers, but com- 
posed exclusively of works connected 
with the traditions of the grand duchy. 
I found there several persons of my own 
kidney, capital fellows, Germans of that 
noble stomach that digests science equal- 
ly with beer. 

The next day I counted, of course, on 
returning to Paris, but the thing was not 
feasible. The clothes in which I stood 
would hardly bear the journey, while my 
funds, though unlimited in the letter 
which I carried in my pocket, were prac- 
tically reduced to a few coppers. To 
change these conditions a little time was 
absolutely necessary. 

For the matter of pocket-money, how- 
ever, small change is perfectly useless at 
Baden-Baden. Once deposited by the 
train at the station of Oos, you become 
a privileged subject of the proprietor. 
He takes charge of your pleasures, treats 
you to balls, races, hunts and concerts, 
and will not let you pay so much as a 
cab-driver or a washerwoman. For these. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



IOI 



again, there is a formal tariff of charges, 
regulated by city ordinance. Of those 
wasps of the traveler's life you hear noth- 
ing until the day of your departure, when 
they make a feeble rattle in the hotel- 
clerk's bill. 

The persuasions of my acquaintance, 



the claims of my affairs, and, above all, 
a certain assonance and sympathy I 
found between this sentimental watering- 
place and my feelings, prevented my 
immediate departure. I therefore began 
to explore the locality. I dashed through 
the Black Forest like the Black Hunts- 




THE GALLERY OF LEGENDS. 



man of Fontainebleau — in a cab, how- 
ever. I faithfully attended the concerts. 
I took part in the promenade — easily 
planted in a garden-chair. I frequented 
the Conversations-Haus. I enjoyed the 
Casino, with its books and its maggots. 
I even condescended to visit the reading- 
room of good Frau Marx, where, plunged 
into all the papers and all the reviews 
of the day, were noses of old club-men 
from half the countries of Europe, not to 
speak of the frosty ones belonging to 
German school-mistresses, who pottered 
round the tables in impossible bonnets. 
I became reconciled to Baden-Baden, 
and no longer called it a theatrical dec- 
oration. 

At the Old Trinkhalle, where is found 
the principal or father fountain, I would 
watch Sylvester, armed with a little 
thermometer, testing the water, which 
has the singular faculty of burning the 
hand, but not the lips. O simple prob- 
lem, but too much for a diplomatist ! 



Berkley drank like a dolphin, and was 
probably the most superstitious believer 
in all the baths. 

Opposite the Old Trinkhalle is the old 
drinking-gallery, now become the gen- 
eral shelter for all the broken statues, all 
the Roman potsherds, left from the an- 
cient Aurelia Aquensis. There I saw a 
Mercury with ass's ears, found on the 
summit of the Stauffenberg, which owes 
thereto its modern name of Mount Mer- 
cury. With Berkley I visited the Stauf- 
fenberg aforesaid, the Fremersberg and 
many others. The old cemetery itself 
received our visiting-card, though there 
is no record of tourists having gone thith- 
er before us. We were rewarded by the 
sight of its calvary and cross, where the 
Saviour appears life-sized, while behind 
him, on a mountain two yards high, 
perches an angel in the most innocently- 
diminished perspective. At this gro- 
tesque monument Sylvester, to my sur- 
prise, crossed himself. Abstaining, for 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



my part, out of respect for art, if for nothing else, I 
asked him frankly the cause of his un-English ac- 
tion. "My views may be peculiar," said he, "but 
as I think a diplomatist is the mediator between 
different nations, I consider that he ought to ob- 
serve all religious practices that are not in them- 
selves immoral." 

We next entered a little cell decorated as a chapel. 
The walls were covered with ex voto offerings, such 
as little twisted arms and clubbed feet, modeled in 
plaster : small paintings of many kinds, each with 
the story of a miraculous cure, told of the interces- 
sion of the saints, more powerful here, it would 
seem, than the thermal springs. In the chapel and 
around the door were good simple peasants, men 
and women, muttering their paternosters as they 
knelt. Sylvester knelt with them, and like them 
muttered a prayer. 

It was after our promenade in the cemetery that 
I bethought me of a mundane but agreeable resur- 
rection, that of my wardrobe. I dropped Berkley, 
with rendezvous at the New Trinkhalle, and in the 
discreet shelter of a tailor's shop caused my old 
scarred habit to disappear under a neat spring sur- 
coat, with some further transformations of like cha- 
racter. I also procured varnished shoes and a silk- 
en hat, so strong upon me was the influence of wa- 
tering-place vanity and the fear of hotel-stewards. 
Making then for the Trinkhalle, I found in its vicin- 
ity a knot of my philosophic friends from the Ca- 
sino, together with the painter and the literary man. 

Opposite the New Trinkhalle, which is not to be 
confounded with the old one, rises an edifice in 
the form of a classic portico, presenting a long gal- 
lery upheld by Corinthian pillars. On the wall be- 
tween each pair of columns is painted in fresco some 
legend of the country, to the number of fourteen 
pictures. One of these allegories the painter was 
demonstrating to his friends, like a geometrical the- 
orem, with the aid of his cane. I joined the group. 
" It is the story of young Burkhardt Keller, a noble 
knight. On two different evenings he met, as he 
was riding through the forest of Kuppenheim, a 
lady veiled in white, who sank into the ground at 
his approach. He caused the ground to be dug up 
in the place where she had disappeared, and found 
there the remains of a Roman altar, then the frag- 
ments of a statue, of which the bust alone remained j$ 
uninjured. The features were of great beauty, and * 
the gallant Keller would fain have had it play for 
him the part of Galatea before Pygmalion. In the 

same wood, at the hour of midnight, Keller met the veiled lady for the third time. 
On this occasion she did not sink into the earth : leaning against the altar, she slowly 
raised her veil. The face was that of the statue, but animated and alive. Keller 



# 



IBB 



THE MARBLE VEIL. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



ro 3 




THE PAGAN ALTAR. 



advanced ardently, and she opened her 
arms. When they closed again upon 
that perfect breast they had returned to 
stone. Next day the youthful knight 




THE CONVERTED PRE-RAPHAELITE. 

was found dead at the foot of the ruined 
altar, a pool of blood flowing from his 



mouth. The veiled dame was one of 
the devils." 

We politely applauded the artist's story, 
though I think we all knew it, and I for 
my part had been reading it the day be- 
fore in a volume found at Frau Marx's. 

The literary man, however, showed no 
marks of approval. " See how you have 
spoiled," said he to the narrator, " a fable 
bearing most pointedly on your own 
artistic and vagabond profession. Now 
listen to me. I have found the same 
episode in the Chronicle of Otho of 
Freissingen : I shall narrate it for your 
benefit, introducing a few details from 
that of Gunther. A good legend deserves 
a title. I shall call it ' The Unhappy 
Pre-Raphaelite.' It goes back as far as 
the twelfth century. 

"In the court of the margrave Herr- 
mann, sitting contemptuously on an 
overthrown saint in the chapel, might 
have been seen a comely young man 
biting the ends of his moustache with 
vexation. ' Why has the margrave made 
me his minister of the household and 
of fine arts ?' he said. ' I am out of my 
element here. We make nothing but 
angular saints and angels in mediaeval 
positions. They will call us purists, and 
worship us in the future, I know very 
well ; but I am a born romanticist. Why 
has the school of Delacroix not arisen, 
that I might join myself to his standard ?' 

"The young man's name was Keller. 
He had accompanied Frederick Barba- 



104 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




A BIT OF PRE-RAPHAELITE REALISM. 



rossa on his first crusade, but, although 
brave, he had not disemboweled a single 
Saracen. ' The Oriental schools of 1840,' 
said he, 'will need them all for their 
Turkeries? He brought home with him 
simply a raging mania for inlaid armor 
and palm-leaf shawls. You perceive, 
gentlemen, a veritable Decamps of the 
Middle Ages ! Although of a meek and 
humble spirit, he could not attend mass 
before the hideous high altar, emblazon^- 
ed with all the jeweled hideousness of 
Gothic statuary. Yet he had been in 
Rome to attend the coronation of the 
same emperor Frederick Barbarossa ! 
What attracted him at Rome were not 
the processions, the pope, nor the Byzan- 
tine frescoes in the basilicas. ' They will 
do very well for Ruskin,' he said, ' but 
I wish to record myself as decidedly re- 
naissance.' So he used to sit on fallen 
capitals and beweep the lost noses of 
heathen deities. 

"Returning home, his behavior was 
remarked in church. Poor lover of 
plastic beauty, simple line and artistic 
suavity ! he was obliged to turn away his 
eyes from the images of the saints. 
Whatever was angular, disjointed or 
grimacing affected him with nausea ; 
and he used to groan when the licensed 
sculptor of the court, who was also the 
bellows-mender, set up a new saint with 
flutes for legs and a high seraphic ex- 
pression. 



"The margrave Hermann loved Keller 
like a father, having raised him from a 
simple page. As there was some danger 
of his being burnt for sacrilege by the 
pure-minded and devout pre-Raphaelites 
around him, an aristocratic match was hit 
upon. The daughter of the provost of 
Kuppenheim, known for the strictness 
of her Catholicism, would lead him back 
to a better way and to aesthetic principles 
more safe for the preservation of human 
life in a pious age. When Miss Kup- 
penheim, however, was paraded from her 
convent for his inspection, he found her 
long-footed, goose-necked, violin-breast- 
e d and ec- 
static, much 
like the statue 
of Saint Ot- 
tilia ; but he 
consented to 
visit her two 
or three even- 
ings in guise 
of a suitor. 

"Just at this 
period his 
secretary, 
knowing him 
curious about 
old broken 
china, Ro- 
man cement 
and such 
things, came A subject for the bath- 




THE NEW HYPERION. 



°5 



to announce that the foresters, in uproot- 
ing an oak somewhere about the pleas- 
aunce, had uncovered a stone vault, 
built with mortar so hard that the roots 
had hardly succeeded in penetrating it. 
Keller caused an opening to be made, 
and descended with a torch. 
" He was in a Doric chapel, in the 



middle of which was a statue so beauti- 
ful that it betrayed the chisel of Phidias. 
"You know the collector Sauvageot 
spent a quarter of a year in cleaning 
with a needle the splendid purse-clasp 
of Henri II., which was bought for three 
francs as old iron. Keller undertook a 
similar service for the white daughter of 




TREASURES OF "LA FAVORITE. 



Phidias, in removing with the point of 
his dagger each mossy film from her 
marble skin. When a month had slip- 
ped away in this delightful labor, he 
passed many further days in measuring, 
analyzing and studying her soft perfec- 
tions, to the complete neglect of Miss 
Kuppenheim. 
"Now it was not so very long since 




A DANDY SKELETON. 

the soldiers of the Cross, after incessant 
struggles, had obliterated paganism in 
Germany. Some obstinate heathens, in 
the recesses of the Black Forest, were 
supposed to be still attached to their 
idols. The Vehmic tribunals were yet 



daily looking out for opportunities to 
drive back to the fold, with holy vio- 
lence, the estrays both of politics and 
theology. The provost of Kuppenheim 
presided at one of these tribunals. He 
was heard to remark that the slight put 
upon his daughter had no influence on 
his legislation, but that the moral eleva- 
tion of pre-Raphaelitism must be pre- 
served. 

" The temple was one day 
found overthrown and the 
daughter of Phidias shatter- 
ed. The saint-maker, possess- 
ing himself of one of her legs, 
observed that he could make 
three or four out of it for the 
new group of Saint Ursula 
and her virgins commanded 
by Miss Kuppenheim. It is 
unnecessary to add that Burk- 
hardt Keller was discovered 
lying among the fragments, 
pierced to the heart. The dagger was 
his own, but on it was perceived the seal 
of the Vehmic judges : they used to 
hide their hand, but they signed their 
works." 

We received with suitable edification 



io6 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



this history of an early martyr for the 
Renaissance. Sylvester Berkley emerged 
from the Trinkhalle, his last drop. of 
whey on his lips, at the moment when 
the literary gentleman was bringing in 
his Vehmic judges. I took care not to 
interrupt him, but at the moment of his 
conclusion I said: "So the Vehmic trib- 
unal has held its sessions in this region ? 
They occupied, then, the subterranean 
chambers of the New Castle, since, un- 
der the presidency of one Kuppenheim, 
provost of Baden, they could pronounce 
and execute sentence upon Burkhardt 
Keller?" 

I regarded Sylvester sarcastically as I 
delivered this crusher. I supposed him 
annihilated. Berkley considered a few 
seconds ; then, with a parliamentary 
gesture, addressing the others rather than 
myself, he poured forth a little history 
of the Vehmic institution from its foun- 
dation by Charlemagne, so lucid, rapid, 
fluent and bright that Clio in person 
could not have acquitted herself better. 
These courts, to believe him, had render- 
ed in their time a service to religion as 
great as that of the Inquisition, which 
he praised in passing as having saved 
Spain and Italy from the bloody relig- 
ious wars which raged contemporane- 
ously in France, England and the Neth- 
erlands. The Vehmic judges, especially 
powerful in Westphalia, had successively 
fixed themselves in Frankfort, in Rastadt 
and in Baden. But they had never sat 
in the cellars of the Neues Schloss : he 
would answer for it. 

To my profound surprise, the savants 
of the Casino were of his opinion, and 
even the author sustained him. To such 
a vacillating condition does a course of 
drinking at a fashionable watering-place 
bring a man's backbone ! 

Another picture in the Gallery of 
Legends helped to re-establish me after 
this humiliation. 

A dispute sprang up about the powers 
of the natural springs taken as a bath. 
Sylvester, a headlong bather and a will- 
ing orator, pronounced a discourse in 
their favor. I opposed him, armed with 
complete ignorance of the subject, and 
adorning my arguments with botanical 



flowers derived from my small study of 
simples. 

"Mr. Flemming," said Berkley, con- 
cealing a smile, "you, in this age when 




A FRIEND IN CHURCH. 



legends are receiving their eternal qui- 
etus, remain one of the faithful. For 
you a story has only to be wild and im- 
probable to receive the most ardent sup- 
port. I will argue with you simply by 
means of another painting in yonder gal- 
lery." And, borrowing the artist's cane, 
he pointed to the picture of the Baldreit. 
This was the name of one of the most 
celebrated old hotels near Baden-Baden. 
Cured at the spring, an ancient prince 
of the Palatinate leaped up early one 
morning, leaving his gout behind him in 
the wash-basin. He ordered a horse 
and pranced about the courtyard in his 
joy, awakening landlord, ostlers and 
servants with his din. Waving his hand 
to them, the prince said : " See how soon 
I can ride." But the noise was such that 
"soon ride" were the only words they 
could hear, and "soon ride" remained 
the sign of the house. In the fresco, 
animated and blithe, he leaps to the sad- 
dle, while the landlord thrusts his night- 
cap from a window, the chambermaid 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



107 



lifts her arms to Heaven, the servants 
stare, the knight's "nurse curses in the 
pantry, and everything is in extremity." 
My answer was ready. "What is the 
picture about?" I asked of Sylvester. 
"The palatine comes to Baden with a 




HERCULES-CUPID. 



palsy, and is instantly cured. Why, then, 
as the painting shows you, it is a special 
miracle, a fact without precedent. By 
their surprise, amounting to terror, yon- 
der Boniface and servants testify that 
they have never seen or heard of such a 
thing. It is, then, not the habit of the 
water, but the exception, that is com- 
memorated by the artist — " 

" Herr Goetzenberger," put in the land- 
scape-painter. 

"Mr. Goetzenberger's picture is the 
only one in the gallery of which the pro- 
gramme conceals the date and hero's 
name. The plumed hat and the yellow 
boots he puts on his knight indicate the 
thirteenth or fourteenth century for the 
miracle. Be assured it has never hap- 
pened since." 

I got the laughs that time, and Berkley 
had an aspect decorously diabolical. 

Meanwhile — such an enigma is the 
heart of man — I felt less and less like 
returning home. My imperious longings 
to depart were strangely mitigated when 
I held in my hand the key of deliverance. 



With the' first application I made to 
Meyer on the strength of my letter of 
credit I felt the swelling need of dis- 
porting a day or two on the strength of 
my funds, away from the chains of home 
and the tyranny of my faithful Charles 
and Josephine. To increase the con- 
geniality of my surroundings, I found 
myself in a perfect saturation of legend- 
ary romance. I could hardly put my 
head out of window but a poem or a 
fable was unerringly darted at me, like 
the bouquets with barbed pins which are 
shot at you by the flower-girls of Naples. 
If I examined some faded print in a 
bookseller's window, and idly wondered 
who might be the hero of that triumphal 
entry or civic reception, an obliging 
Teutonic voice was ready at my ear : 
"It is the return of the margrave Lud- 
wig-Wilhelm to Baden-Baden, sir, after 
conquering the Turks. What do they 
think of our hero in your country, sir?" 
the voice would add. 

"He is highly esteemed," was the 
necessary reply, upon which I would fly 
like a scared child to the good Frau 
Marx or to the Casino of Holland for 
the purpose of mending the deplorable 
ignorance from which, in company with 
my good fellow-countrymen, I suffered 
in regard to this particular immortal. 

The snare thus laid, it was impossible 
to get rid of the heroic warrior, who stuck 
to me like birdlime. The library of the 




EXTRAVAGANCE. 



io8 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



Casino informed me that he was brought 
up like a girl, after the precedent of 
Achilles at Scyros, his mother having 
exacted solemn oaths from his tutors 
that never a weapon should touch his 
hands. One day the unfeminine girl 
kissed her governess like a trooper, and 
then leaped from the 
window to box with the 
porters in the court- 
yard. Become mar- 
grave of Baden, Lud- 
wig made twenty -six 
campaigns, conduct- 
ed twenty-five sieges, 
appeared in forty 
fights, shared with IfaS^pS? 
John Sobieski the glory 
of delivering Vienna 
from the Turks, and 
died peaceably in bed. 
A few hours after it 
would be the tomb. 
.Here, having unwit- 
tingly strayed into the 
collegiate church of 
Baden - Baden, I was 
fascinated for an hour 
by the allegories piled 
up in honor of this 
same Ludwig-Wilhelm 
by Pigalle, and the 
pompous Latin in 
which his glories were 
celebrated : Atlas Ger- 
manics — Imperii pro- 
tector — Hostium ter- 
ror — Injidelium debel- 
lator — Quoad vixit, 
semper vicit, nunquam 
v ictus. O illimitable 
glories of this world ! how small a part 
of its geography do you really cover ! 

It was from the tomb of Ludwig that 
I was excavated by a waiter from the 
hotel, who had been sent out by Sylves- 
ter to search until he found me. There 
was project of an excursion to Eberstein- 
burg, La Favorite. Every tourist visits 
the Favorite, a mile from Baden-Baden, 
and it harmonized well enough with my 
thoughts of the instant, for it was built in 
1725 by the margravine Sibylle-Auguste, 
Ludwig-Wilhelm's eccentric spouse. 



In approaching the favorite residence 
of Ludwig's widow, kept intact, in furni- 
ture and upholstery, since her death 
about 1733, I assumed my behavior of 
propriety : my head bent, my nose in 
my hat, I prepared to enter a palace 
which was in some sort a mausoleum. 




THE CELES 



What I actually found was an endless 
curiosity-shop. The shelves were stuffed 
with Venice glasses, Bohemian crystal, 
hard-paste, soft-paste, Chinese crackle 
and Limoges enamels. The glass cases 
were filled with carved rock-crystal and 
jade. Similar baubles were accumulated 
on the walls, the cornices, the chimney- 
pieces and the stoves. 

Berkley > my cicerone, had told me 
that I should find the portrait of my 
hero Ludwig, and even under several 
different types. I passed rapidly over 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



109 




THE UNWILLING LISTENER. 

the faience and majolica, searching eager- 
ly for that warrior ; for, in my opinion, 
there is no historical document equal to 
the simple physiognomy of the individual 
faithfully copied without flattery by an 
artist. Lost among the memorial gim- 
cracks, I failed to find a likeness of the 
margrave, and consulted in despair a 
multitude of miniatures representing a 
whole nation of women. 

Among these ladies some v/ere in court 
costume, some in mourning robes, the 
majority in many different travesties, as 
of gypsies, dancers or jugglers with 
pointed caps or fanciful turbans. On a 
closer examination, all these faces had a 
look of relationship, an air of resem- 
blance. I had in fact under my eyes, in 
this extravagant German seraglio, a sin- 
gle woman, the margravine Sibylle-Au- 
guste, nun, odalisque, marchioness or 
witch at pleasure ! 

Berkley, who joined me, showed me a 
series opposite, representing a good, vul- 
gar, burgher's face adorned with as great 
a variety of costumes as its neighbor's. 
This good burgher, unfortunately for 
himself, was the dashing hero, the Turk- 
slayer, Ludwig-Wilhelm himself! 



There were seventy-two margravines, 
seventy-two margraves — in all, one hun- 
dred and forty-four portraits from two 
models. How the ghost of Ludwig must 
have haunted the painter who seventy- 
two times slandered him ! 

Was the extraordinary Sibylle a luna- 
tic, a poetess .or a saint ? We visited 
next the cell of the same princess, con- 
structed in a corner of her park. Here, 
during every Lent, she repented of her 
sins for the year, sleeping on earth and 
straw, causing her maids to flagellate 
her with leaded thongs, and dining in 
company with waxen statues of the Vir- 
gin and Saint Joseph. Easter arrived, 
she flung her nun's cap up the chimney, 
and began again those orgies prolonged 
till daylight which were the scandal of 
the land. 

But it is the country of lady eccentrics. 
What tourist has not had pointed out to 
him, but a few years back, the extraor- 
dinary concurrence of female celebrities 
gathered around the green tables of 
Baden-Baden ? A woman now playing 
the violin is far from an every-day spec- 
tacle. A nun stroking the same instru- 
ment is, one would say, a still rarer sight. 
Yet that was what was seen formerly at 
the convent of Lichtenthal. At present 
you do not see the pious fiddlers, but you 
hear them still. 

Soothing my homeward-yearning con- 
science by the assurance that I had some 
very important notes to take on the history 
of Ludwig-Wilhelm, I went for one last 
time to the Casino of Holland. When I 
observed neatly tacked upon the door 
the legend, "Shut on account of Sun- 
day," I remembered what day it was. I 
then followed one of the prettiest Sab- 
bath promenades of Baden-Baden by 
strolling over the pleasant walk to Licht- 
enthal. 

The little church of the Augustine 
nuns at Lichtenthal was founded in the 
thirteenth century by the widow of Mar- 
grave Hermann V. It still retains the 
fine Byzantine Madonna which once 
marched to the door and offered the 
keys in heavenly sarcasm to a band of 
marauders. On either side of the altar 
I saw the glass cases in which are pre- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



served the bones of Saint Pius and Saint 
Benedict. Better-dressed skeletons are 
seldom met in mortuary circles. Collars 
of lace, rosettes of velvet and pearl on 
each rib, on the bald ivory skulls rich 
caps in plumes — they are altogether what 



Victor Hugo has well called "troubadour 
skeletons." 

Another singularity struck me. Twen- 
ty minutes before the mass the candles 
were blazing on the altar, and the sounds 
of distant music, like heavenly viols, 




NUN VIOLINISTS. 



seemed to celebrate aerially a service 
that was invisible to the eye. Probably 
the Sisters, in their cloister, were tuning 
their violins. The congregation, not yet 
diluted with the throngs of curious travel- 
ers who attend later in the season, was 
completly German, silent and absorbed. 
Not far from me I recognized, seated in 
his stall, one of my savants of the Casino : 
he was a fine little gentleman, asthmatic 
and short-stemmed. On his right was 
a villager, or perhaps my friend's servant, 
mumbling over his breviary. This learn- 
ed man had obliged me, the day before, 
with a crabbed manuscript, so insuffer- 
ably fine that I had incontinently stuffed 
it in my pocket. Now, as if there were 
a system of dumb-show established be- 
tween us, this man of learning began to 
make signs to me, pointing out the altar j 
and one of the skeletons, his head all 
the while playing a perfect fountain of 
nods. I nodded in my turn, without a 
particle of comprehension, and in due 
time yielded myself to the enjoyment of 



the Sisters' music. After service I ap- 
proached to ask an explanation, but he 
was encircled by a bevy of ladies. As I 
passed, however, he flung me out a kind- 
ly ejaculation : " There, you see — it was 
the invisible mass — the legend — you 
know," and sent me back quite bewilder- 
ed to the hotel. 

On my walk, however, it occurred to 
me to examine the manuscript. I pass- 
ed the happy promenaders with my face 
quite shut up in the book, of which the 
writing was so close that the eyes could 
decipher it only by a sort of contact. 
There I found question of my warrior 
Ludwig-Wilhelm ; of the fiddling nuns ; 
of one of the canonized skeletons by the 
altar ; of the wild penitent Sibylle-Au- 
guste ; the whole playing around the per- 
son of a relative of the margrave's — 
none other than Margrave Charles of 
Carlsruhe, he who had dreamed in the 
forest, and sketched that fair city as the 
delineation of his dream. 

This prince was in his youth extreme- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




At the same time he was the pride of 
his father, Margrave Frederick VII. of Baden- 
Durlach, and so handsome and vigorous that 
the historian Schoepflin says of him that "Na- 
ture, hesitating whether to form a Hercules or a 
Cupid, made both the one and the other." He 
was called to Stockholm to see if he would an- 
swer for husband to the queen-dowager's grand- 
daughter. But his conduct was so wild in Swe- 
den that he was not invited to prolong the visit. 
He fought with Ludwig at Landau, and came 
back wounded to the baths, where Sibylle-Au- 
guste received him honorably and lodged him 
in the Neues Schloss. Hercules-Cupid's unhap- 
py reputation soon began to gather around him 
again like a cloud, and one day an Augustinian 
nun ran pouting to the abbot Benedict and com- 
plained that the devil had kissed her. The 
good abbot arranged that the devil should not 
return, and took his measures so well that 
Charles conceived against him a deep feeling of 
spite. 

At this time, in the general state of poverty 
consequent upon war, the Church was threatened 
with bankruptcy. The nuns feared being obliged 
to abandon the orphans whom they were edu- 
cating. In such an extremity the abbot, although 
eighty-seven years old, took the field and begged 
from door to door, arriving finally at the New 
Castle. 

His young enemy, Charles, promised ten thou- 
sand florins on condition that he, the abbot, 
should say a mass for the success of his enter- 
prises ; and this not once nor twice, but ten times 
a year for ten years. The abbot pointed out 
that such an engagement, for a nonagenarian, 
would be unsuitable and impious. The young 
margrave held firmly to his condition that the 
mass should be performed by the abbot alone, 
even should he have to return from the other 
world to do it. Upon this the good man crossed 
himself as if he were conversing with the Fiend 
person, and retired to pursue his quest else- 
where. Soon, however, he returned : the citi- 
zens were impotent, the nuns were weeping. 
He signed the bond, and hurried back to the 
convent with his ten thousand florins. That 
very night, after so strange an excitement, he 
was seized with apoplexy and died. 
a forest drive. Already revenged on the abbot, the pitiless 

Charles pursued the Church. Refusing the 
masses of any substitute, or even of the bishop, he instituted a suit. The princess 
Sibylle-Auguste threatened him with her anger, but he was unyielding. The Sun- 
day arrived at length for the first of the ten annual masses. Sibylle and the nuns 



112 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



were in their chapel, the hour passed, 
and the bishop did not appear. The 
princess sent a page for him, when, to 
the great surprise of the congregation, 
the doors of the church rolled back of 
themselves on their hinges : a man ap- 
peared, haggard, gasping, and staggered 
toward the choir as if impelled by supe- 
rior force. It was Charles. 

The door closed behind him, and im- 
mediately the church was filled with 
eerie music, vibrating from harps and 
violins in the upper arches. At the altar 
now could be heard the holy mutter of 
a man's voice — a voice that made Charles 
tremble. Bending his starting eyes upon 
the spot, he easily distinguished there 
the shade of Benedict going through the 
office as of yore, while angels swung the 
censers. For the congregation it was an 
invisible mass : they only saw the stirring 
of the altar-laces, the book opening of 
itself, the sacred wafer entering volun- 
tarily into the tabernacle. 

Mass over, the pale witnesses of this 
miracle found Charles leaning against a 
pillar of the doorway, panting. He had 
wished to fly, but a superior force with- 
stood him at the portal. 

Charles stopped his suit. The elegant 
and pious Sibylle, struck with the celes- 
tial harmonies she had heard, and was 
not quite certain of hearing again, con- 
ferred an endowment providing for a 
choir of violins to be played on Sundays 
and feasts by the nuns. Charles, or Carl- 
Wilhelm, the hero of this prodigious his- 
tory, became very brave, but never lost 
his gallantry. After the peace of Ra- 
stadt, renouncing his residence at Dur- 
lach, he laid out Carlsruhe, as we have 
seen, on the model of a lady's fan. 

It was still early in the day, the weath- 
er was delicious, and I felt ashamed of 
my inertia as I flung away the little 
manuscript book. Sylvester Berkley had 
refreshed himself at the sermon of an 
Anglican divine, the first of all that flock 
of curate - tourists who would brighten 
the atmosphere of Baden-Baden during 
the summer — an edification which seem- 
ed to express itself in the enhanced white- 
ness and accuracy of his cravat and the 
transfigured effulgence of his highlows. 



We arranged a drive to New Eberstein, 
on the Murg, a castle eight miles off, in- 
viting the artist and the literary man, 
who had been sacrilegiously devoting the 
morning to chess. 

It was a beautiful excursion along the 
bases of the hills and under the tasseled 




THE DISCONTENTED ARTIST. 

shadows of the Black Forest. However, 
when, walking up an ascent for the ease 
of the horses, I burst into exclamations 
at the view, I could get no response from 
the landscape-painter. He stood digging 
his cane into the bark of one of those 
immense trees called Hollanders, be- 
cause they are chosen for the Holland 
marine. As I expatiated on the scene, 
he gruffly said, " Humph ! Light badly 
distributed, sky improbable." 

Who ever knew a landscape-painter 
to approve a landscape unless it were on 
canvas ? 

Long rafts of felled timber were slow- 
ly coiling their way along the Murg. It 
was Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane 
— the Black Forest moving in serried 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



JI 3 



ranks down upon the Netherlands. From 
far up the little stream — from the cloudy 
recesses of its humid forest cradle — 
come pouring the uptorn, helpless trees, 
caught in its eddies, precipitated over its 



cascades, trying with dumb fidelity to 
learn the fluidity of water. 

We were unable to enter the Eberstein, 
it being occupied. The visitors were 
disposed to complain of this disappoint- 








THE MUKG RIVER. 



ment, with the exception of one, who sat 
down muttering quite cheerfully under a 
tree. That one was Flemming, and he 
sat as contentedly as possible, crooning 
ballads of Uhland and Schiller, and fill- 
ing his reverie with Black Knights and 
ghostly battles. Was not the Grafen- 
sprung, the Count's Leap, before him ? 
Were not those the toiling whirlpools of 
the Murg ? Was he not free to penetrate 
the Eberstein at the advantage of some 
centuries in advance ? 

A great poet and a great painter have 
blended their genius over the .fortunes 
of Count Eberhardt and his family. It 
will not improve the romance of the 
situation to explain their ancestral tree, 
but a few words will place the works of 



these two immortal artists in harmony 
with each other. 

Schiller's ballad and SchefFer's canvas 
celebrate a sister and a brother, children 
of Count Eberhardt II. of Wurtemberg. 
The son, a youth of promise, for yielding 
the victory to some troops of the palat- 
inate, was reproached by his father, who 
cut the tablecloth in front of his place, 
signifying that the young knight had not 
gained his bread. Afterward, on a day 
of splendid victory, the boy was slain, 
and his father retired weeping to his tent 
amid the general acclaim. His name 
was thereupon changed from Eberhardt 
the Fighter to Eberhardt the Weeper, 
and his mourning over the gallant dead 
is the subject of Scheffer's picture in the 



ii4 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



Luxembourg, of which a magnificent 
replica by the artist is visible to my 
American reader in dear old Boston 
Athenaeum. 

The sister, Lida, was forced by her 
father to marry her cousin Conrad ; but 
the bride was placed upon the noble 
horse Tador, which had been taken 
from her own true love, Count Wolf 
of Eberstein. Obeying some impulse 
quite worthy of Pegasus, this steed, in 
the ballad of Schiller, flies like the 
wind with Lida to the castle on the 
Murg where Wolf is hiding. He leaps 
with her upon the horse, braves the 
pursuers as long as possible, and then 
wildly dashes with his two loves, his 
horse and his affianced, over the steep 
cliff into the river. 

With much converse over the Ger- 
man ballad-form between the author 
and myself, we returned to Baden- 
Baden. The painter and the diplo- 
matist, disgusted with our frivolous 
sentiment, fell to talking on the sub- 
ject of skimmed milk, upon which 
theme they met with equal enthusiasm, 
the fluid serving the one as a varnish 
for his charcoal-sketches, the other as 
an occasional diet. 

Our horses were good, and we arrived 
quite early in the afternoon. I felt like 
taking advantage of the weather, and 
asked the landlord how I should put in 
my time. As I approached him with 
this question, my vision of a stay in Ba- 
den-Baden was extended over several 
days at least. His reply set me to pack- 
ing my new pantaloons and trifles as if 
my life depended on it. At the moment 
when I felt most assured of some settled 
fixity my incomparable enthusiasm of 



temper set me flying off like a projectile. 
He spoke — and it was disinterested of 
him — of an amusing conference going 
on at Achern, a station on the road to 
Kehl. The catchword of Kehl remind- 
ed me of Strasburg, £pernay and home. 




SCHILLER AND SCHEFFER. 



As for the attraction, it was a congress 
of all the philharmonic and orpheonist 
societies of Alsace and the grand duchy. 
This Sunday night would be their grand 
pot pourri. 

The temptation was too strong for me. 
The train was just attainable. Wring- 
ing Sylvester's hand until the glove split, 
and settling my landlord's bill, I — went 
to Achern on the route to Kehl. 




:p.a_:r/t "Viii. 



THE MUSIK-FEST AT ACHERN 



<Z2^& 




I WAS never a dancing man, having 
been in youth so absent as to forget 
the figures while I whispered poetry into 
my partner's ear, and in age too obese ; 
but I love the concord of sweet sounds, 
and, like Henry of Ofterdingen in No- 
valis's story, Paul Flemming thinks to 
music. I become so absorbed at the 
opera that I have been eyed in my box 
by the principal lady in the female cho- 
ruses, with an absolute certainty that I 
was a conquest. I still repair with the 
baron to representations of Don Gio- 
vanni ; and when Faure is serenading 
the prima donna, guitar in hand, I ob- 



serve to my good Hohenfels, " How that 
melancholy chord he plays vibrates 
through the gayety of the air ! So in 
the noisy crowd do I hear the mournful 
string of my own heart." 

" You are addled eternally, my poor 
Paul," the baron replies. " Don't you 
know that Faure's guitar is a dummy, 
and that his accompaniment is really 
played by that squinting young man at 
the large harp ?" 

The baron, an excellent fellow, is too 
prosaic to perceive that my imaginative 
way of hearing is the best. It was with 
genuine anticipation, then, that I rolled 
along to hear the orpheonists at Achern : 
these choral reunions are superb affairs 
in Germany. 

On my way I took the towns of Ot- 
tersweier and Sassbach : unless a route 
has something of vagabondage it is no 
route for Flemming. At Ottersweier I 
had been told I could find some curious 
documents — removed thither from the 
great historical stores of Heidelberg — 
about Ludwig-Wilhelm, my scourge of 
the Turks and husband of the frivolous 
devotee Sibylle - Auguste. Greatly in- 
terested in recovering this biographic 
trace, which I had only lost at Baden- 

"5 



n6 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



Baden for the vile reason of the Casino 
being closed for Sunday, I presented 
myself eagerly at the bureau of archives. 




THE ASHES OF TURENNE. 



Still the same baffling privacy and the 
same dominical excuse — "Shut up on 
account of Sunday !" My Sabbath had 
truly been a day of prayer, but of prayer 
ungratified. The church, though, was 
open, and among its mural paintings 
and stucco angels I got the better of my 
chagrin. 

Nor was Sassbach a very satisfactory 
success. I wished to see the monument 
to Turenne, who fell here in 1675, hav- 
ing before him, for adversaries, Monte- 
cuculli and my hero Ludwig-Wilhelm of 
Baden, then a boy twenty years of age. 
I had vaguely heard that at Sassbach, 
by international consent, the death-place 
of Turenne was considered as having 
been conquered to the French nation by 
the warrior's fall — that the scene was, in 
fact, a miniature France, defended by 
an army of a corporal and four zouaves, 
still commanded by the ghost of the 
mighty Turenne. I might have known 
that since the disasters of 1871 no such 
martial courtesies could be claimed by 
France. The real tomb of Turenne is 
at the Invalides, happily safe from the 
reverses of war. His monument, which 
covers nothing, and the relics of the tree 
under which he died, are in the custody 
of an honest Teuton, who warms his 
feet in his little box while he waits for 
patriotic tourists. He showed me the 



bullet which killed the great soldier, and 
I could but secretly wonder how many 
of these authentic balls he might have 
sold to eager French purchasers. 
The vicarious bullet, however, had 
been inspected by more credulous 
* eyes than mine. On the visitors' 
register I saw, under date of April 
4, 1832, the names of Hortense, 
"duchesse de Saint-Leu," and of 
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the lat- 
ter then a wandering actor, with his 
\ greatest comedies and tragedies yet 
"J^- to play, but believing in his star 
^y even before the missile which kill- 
3-""" ed Turenne. 

=_> I was chased out of Sassbach by 

a volley of large drops, precursors 

j-^ of a sullen and determined storm 

which almost literally floated me 

into Achern. The streets, however, 

were as flush with people as though the 

Acherners, like garden flowers, were in 

the habit of coming out to get the shower. 

It was not the deluge which attracted 

them. 

I found Achern a city of silken and 
gingham domes, on which the rain 
thumped its funeral marches persever- 
ingly. A thousand umbrellas surmount- 
ed two or three thousand human heads : 




" NEITHER BED NOR BOARD 



these canopies, however, might have been 
more impartial, for they did not protect 
the sculptured heads of Haydn and Mo- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



117 



zart, which in turn surmounted them: 
the lyre of Strasburg, the Belgian lion, 
the civic arms of Heidelberg, of Colmar, 
of Mannheim, of Mulhausen, tore their 
way on a dozen banner - staves through 
the world of umbrellas. Worse than the 



crowd or the flood, the landlord of the 
Golden Crown met me with that over- 
done air of politeness which announced, 
even before he spoke, that he could offer 
me neither bed nor board. 

My situation would have discomfited 




waiter! wait!" 



Turenne himself. The overstocked Gold- 
en Crown would naturally be the type of 
other hotels ; besides, my hat, a curly 
silken leaf of the Baden-Baden parterre, 
did not invite me to a journey of explo- 
ration. No more did the absence of my 
stout umbrella, which I had left behind : 
it was probably still plunging in quest of 
the bottom of some bottomless oubliette 
of the Neues Schloss. There is nothing 
which awakens the careful and tender 
instinct of a man's heart — no, not one's 
first-born — like a perfectly new hat : you 
shelter the vanity from a wind to which 
you willingly expose the baby. To be 
sure, the loss of your heir excites com- 
miseration, but that of your hat scorn. 
I naturally put up my hand to examine 
mine as I stood in the porte-cochere 
amid a group of unfortunates as sad 
and shelterless as myself, with not a 
dry cheek among us. Jupiter Pluvius ! 
the hat was gone ! 

I had hit upon a method, of specious 
but fallacious cleverness, to reconcile my 
smart chapeau and my rustic garden-cap. 
On the road, ugly and sympathetic, it 
was my bonnet that crowned the situa- 
tion : in the street — that is to say, among 
marts and cities — I wore my hat. In- 
side it I had found a cunning way to 
secrete my cap, reduced to its simplest 
expression, or, in other words, deprived 



of the whalebone that gave it a circular 
bent. This proof of penetrability in 
matter, at least in matter of costume, 
had not a little set me up. I was less 
proud of it now, when the deceptive 
clasp of the whalebone had treacherous- 




ly lulled my poor old head in false se- 
curity, and when my volatile hat was 
probably flying back to its native Baden. 



n8 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



I must seek repose, and it shall be 
elsewhere. I am already quite willing 
to follow my hat. I am quite disgusted 
with Achern, which has become the 
merest bog, and with its landlords, 

Who are indeed a bog that bears 
Your unparticipated cares, 

Unmoved and without quaking. 

I apply for instructions. The landlord, 
who appears again, and who evidently 
disapproves my costume and me, reiter- 
ates, "No room ! no room !" when I ask 




THE DOOR-MAT. 



him the way to the station. I fancy he 
is responding to his own thought rather 
than to mine : in a Baden railway there 
is always room. I try his subordinates : 
there are plenty of waiters, who, stimu- 
lated to the utmost height of their talents, 
with ardent eyes and with the gait of 
hunted ostriches, are vaulting in a covey 
into the dining-room, loaded with plates 
and dishes. I try to bring one down on 
the wing, but he describes a loop around 
me with the quickness of a lasso, and 
shoots through the doorway, within which 
a hundred growling voices are calling for 
him. 

If it was hard that I could not enter, 
I thought it still harder that I could not 
get away. I Relieve I am not naturally 



uncharitable, but in that vlark, damp 
hour I could almost have drowned in the 
gutters of Achern my Baden landlord 
who had sent me there, Berkley who 
had brought me to the baths, the cus- 
toms-officers of Kehl who had despatch- 
ed me for Berkley, the engineer who had 
driven me over to Kehl, the conspirators 
of Epernay, and the wretched James 
Athanasius Grandstone, whose birthday 
had tempted me from the outskirts of 
Paris. While I was musing thus, full of 
spleen and misanthropy, a carriage ap- 
proached like a sail to a shipwreck. It 
was depositing a load of visitors, but it 
would suffice to conduct me to the sta- 
tion. As the driver was closing the 
carriage door I leaped inside before 
him. 

The cabman, with a calm gesture of a 
heavy arm, put me aside like a feather. 
Extracting a glossy hat from under the 
seat I was about to occupy, he observed, 
without seeming to open his mouth, 
" Stout old foreign gentleman in a cap : 
perhaps it is you, sir. Lost hat, handed 
to me by a comrade of mine. Would 
you stand a trifling trinkgeld?" 

Thus it was that after a more or less 
voluntary abdication I recovered my 
crown. But the restoration brought me 
little happiness, for the landlord, who 
ran up once more at the noise of the 
carriage, informed me that the train 
would not stop at Achern until ten. It 
was striking four. I pressed my proper- 
ty upon my brow — as if I were not sure 
to lose it at the first possible opportunity 
— and resumed my thoughts, while the 




COURTING SLEEP. 



driver, certain of better jobs than mine, 
rumbled off without trying to mend my 
indecision. I was tired and humble : I 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



119 



sat doggedly upon the stairs, crowned 
indeed with my novel splendors, but re- 
signing my coat-tails as a door-mat to 
every stranger who chose to tread upon 
them. I believe it was the hat and the 
humility, combined perhaps with my in- 
voluntary liberality to the coachman, 
which converted the landlord. The 
hat of ceremony, indeed, is a kind 
of passport on the Continent. Boni- 
face, at any rate, came to me for the 
fourth time, made me a fourth long- 
bodied bow, and invited me to a large 
chamber on the topmost floor. The 
apartment was soaked with the to- 
bacco-smoke of years. "I give you 
the bed-room of my daughters," he 
said for explanation ; and I tried to 
believe him. 

In a quarter of an hour I was at 
dinner. To dine alone is with me 
an impossibility. My meal, like an 
Egyptian banquet, was made in the 
company of two mysteries — one a 
friend and one an enemy — Francine 
and Fortnoye. The sweet stewardess 
and the enigmatic commission-agent 
helped me to my rations and season- 
ed my sauces. I determined to hunt 
down the whole chimera, and for that 
purpose to go home again by Eper- -=g 
nay and Noisy. 

Cc 

train at ten," I said to the waiter : he 
promised. "You will not forget, on 
any account," I insisted : he repeated 
his vow. It was a broad-boned, color- 
less waiter, with two buttermilk eyes, far 
apart, at the bottom of two caverns tuft- 
ed with white bristles. 

I sought my chamber for a little re- 
pose. At first the tumult of bands in 
the street, a veritable conspiracy between 
the musicians of Baden and those of 
Alsace, and the rehearsals going on in 
the house itself, made slumber impos- 
sible. I tied a handkerchief over my 
ears to exclude the clamor, wrapped my 
nose in the sheet to get rid of the odor 
from the pillows — on which the inn- 
keeper's daughters seemed to have strew- 
ed caporal — and sat for some time in 
bed, upright and agonized. I was soon, 
however, prostrated by sheer fatigue. 



Hardly had I closed my eyes, as it seem- 
ed, when the glimmering, far-apart blu- 
ish eyes of the waiter appeared in the 
doorway, and I was summoned to the 
railway-station. The night-train arrived 
with supernatural whiz and roar. At 




THE ENCHANTED STEED. 



last I found my face turned toward the 
dear lares and penates ! At the rate of 
a mile a minute the engine flew toward 
Paris. At the metropolis what changes 
since my departure ! The new avenues 
and boulevards had developed like 
magic. The belt-railroad surrounding 
the city took possession of me : there 
was no stopping, and with an ever-in- 
creasing speed I was borne quite around 
the capital, and eastward again, by way 
of Charleroi, Luxembourg and Metz, to 
Strasburg. As I was flying, still in the 
train, over the bridge to Kehl, I sudden- 
ly saw two horsemen riding by my side. 
They kept up easily with the locomotive, 
both mounted on the same apocalyptic 
steed, and necessarily running on the 
water. They were richly dressed, but 



120 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



the wind plunged with hollow murmurs 
under their waistcoats, as in empty space. 
There was no flesh on their ribs, long 
spurs were attached to their bony heels, 
and their skeletons rattled at every bound 




THE MIRROR. 



of the horse. The latter had joints of 
steel in sockets of copper, and I heard 
the sound of pistons and the rush of 
steam as he moved : it was my enemy 
the locomotive in a new disguise. The 



riders turned their eyes, filled with pale 
flame, upon me. They gave their names. 
One was Ludwig-Wilhelm, the scourge 
of Islam, the original of the seventy-two 
miniatures I had seen in the Favorite of 
Sibylle-Auguste ; the other was Margrave 
Charles of Baden, founder of the city 
laid out in a fan. 

Charles, in evident allusion to his 
forced entry and detention in the church 
of Lichtenthal, said sneeringly, "Very 
well : you see how it is to be drawn by a 
power stronger than yourself. How do 
you like legendary adventures by this 
time, Mr. Paul Flemming ?" 

Addressing myself immediately to 
Ludwig, whose worthy burgher attitude 
invited confidence, I asked where this 
unslackening race should end. 

"At Achern," he replied. 

" But why must I return thus upon my 
point of departure ?" I demanded. 

"Because you have forgotten to settle 
your account with the landlord," he re- 
torted, with his broad skeleton grin. 

This appeal to my sense of duty shock- 
ed me so that I awoke. It was broad 
day : the train was lost, with a witness ! 

I was ready to raise a shout of distress, 
or at least to summon for vengeance the 
inculpated waiter. A new incident de- 
terred me. A spectre again ! Some- 
thing clad in white was passing around 
the chamber. I thought for a moment, 
with bachelor horror, of the landlord's 
daughters. Supposing this should really 
be their boudoir ! A glance through the 
curtains reassured me : the spectre wore 




WHO KNOWS? 



boots. Another glance showed me a 
gentleman tying his cravat at the glass. 
The host had simply used his right to 
dispose of the vacant bed. The new 



tenant was no ghost : the face I caught 
for a moment in the mirror was comely 
and ruddy. I fell back somewhat com- 
forted, letting go the curtains. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



121 



The lodger having departed, I leaped 
to the floor and made a hasty toilet. 
As I went to crown the edifice by putting 
on my hat, a name written on the lining 
of the article arrested me. It was " Fort- 
noye." We had changed hats ! With this 
sphinx, then, I had passed a whole night 
unconsciously. No wonder my dreams 



were bad. Descending, I asked some 
time-table questions of the landlord, and 
added, " Do you know a certain M. 
Fortnoye, whom you have given me for 
fellow-lodger?" 

"Do I know him ? He is our cham- 
pagne-merchant — mine and all the hotel- 
keepers' within twenty leagues. And a 




MOTION SUSPENDED : RESOLUTION TABLED FOR AMENDMENT. 



fine man, sir, with his joke always in his 
cheek ! You see, the trade makes the 
tradesman, for champagne-sellers keep 
the ball a-rolling : the business lets no 
man be dull. As for this one, he is 
always in good temper : he has it bottled 
in his brains. You should have seen him 
last night. Four students from Carls- 



ruhe and Heidelberg — he had them all 
under the table in no time, and at his 
own expense. But that is his style of 
increasing the connection : they come 
back to it sure enough, sir." 

Mine host, so miserly with his words 
the night before, chatted this morning 
like a parrot : I took advantage of his 




THE TAILBOARD. 



loquacity to get the probable route of 
Fortnoye. 

At some miles from Achern, in a ro- 
mantic landscape, rise the solemn ruins 
of All - Saints' Abbey — Allerheiligen. 
It is a refuge fit for Carlyle's Eternal 
Silences. Hither, nevertheless, were bent 
the combined noises of Baden, Belgium 



and Alsace. Achern had been the focus, 
but Allerheiligen was the Mecca of the 
philharmonic pilgrimage. All the mu- 
sicians and singers, as well as all the 
rest who were merely secular and audi- 
tory, would pour to-day into the ruined 
abbey. I hesitated but a minute : I took 
a seat on the tailboard of a terrible cart, 



122 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



and I followed the world — followed the 
drivers, followed the walkers, followed 
Fortnoye, followed my hat. 



village, whose inhabitants, probably aug- 
mented by neighbors from the inner 
country, passed us in review. The peas- 



Every ten minutes we passed a pretty i ants here are not like those whom you 




BLACK FOREST FLOWERS. 



see in Carlsruhe and Baden - Baden. 
You are already in the Black Forest. 
The countrymen were in ample red waist- 
coats and broad hat-brims, the blonde 
girls bare-headed, with floating ribbons. 
As we filed through these ranks of rustic 



spectators, the red waistcoats, alternating 
with the golden heads, shone like pop- 
pies in a field of wheat. The quantity 
of yellow tresses I saw on this excursion 
was truly edifying. I am certain that 
Germany pioduces a sufficiency to sur- 



6 $ 




THE TRYSTING-PLACE. 



round the globe with a ringlet of gold — 
a precious ecliptic, worthy enough to 
mark the course of the sun. 
After passing through several hamlets 



— I think Ober-Achern, Furschenbach, 
Ottenhofen were among them — and con- 
suming two hours of time, we descended 
from the cart to clamber up the hills. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



123 



Fifty minutes' climbing, and we paused 
in a little grove, which seemed to have 
been appropriated as point of reference 
for all the strayed revelers and disjointed 
couples who attended the concert. Here 
those who had lost their friends, girls 
who missed their lovers, and husbands 
divorced from their wives, met by mu- 
tual agreement. It was a concourse of 
Plato's half-souls, seeking their affinities 
anxiously and clamorously. Odd sounds, 
agreed upon no doubt as signals, made 
the little wood vocal : some crowed like 
cocks, some hooted like owls, some bel- 



lowed like all the herds of Bashan — a 
singular concert, preluding the genuine 
one. Every fatigue-cap, felt and kepi 
collected in the grove passed under my 
inspection, but I could not detect my own 
hat or the countenance of Fortnoye. The 
throng gradually dispersed, moving to- 
gether in a particular direction, and I 
followed the rest. Every one went to 
buy tickets at a box-office temporarily 
set up behind a high rock. I secured a 
card with a lyre on it, a first-class place, 
and the change for a half-florin. A hun- 
dred paces farther, as the path descend- 










SHADES OF THE BLACK FOREST. 



ed through the trees, a view burst upon 
us of the ruins and their site. 

Seated in its rocky funnel, with an 
amphitheatre of noble scenery around, 
and the echoes of the Grindbachs cata- 
ract muffled in the tufted woods, the ab- 
bey of Allerheiligen was of old a nest 
of learning, famous for the sapience of 
its sylvan monks. Here Elmy the gyp- 
sy, whose student-lover had climbed to 
the crow's nest to recover her betrothal- 
ring saw the brave boy dashed to pieces 
at her feet, and only obtained the pre- 
cious token from his dead hand. The 
betrothed couples of the present day I 
found more comfortably engaged : the 
lasses were pouring out beer for the lads. 



and family groups, perched everywhere 
on the hillside, were regaling themselves 
with viands frugally brought from home. 
Those heads of families who missed the 
shadow of a tree or a thicket tranquilly 
dined in the sun. Indeed, they were not 
entirely deprived of shelter, seeing that 
the breadths of felt with which they 
shaded their own brows cast a liberal 
and grateful penumbra over the whole 
group. Nowhere else can you find man- 
kind wearing such solid and ample par- 
asols : if these honest Black Foresters 
could measure their height by the cir- 
cumference of their brims, they would 
be giants. What was strange, neither 
in the field at the bottom of the funnel 



124 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



nor on the sides was there a sign that 
these pilgrims of melody thought of any- 
thing but eating and drinking. I should 
have argued the concert to be postponed 
sine die if I had not accidentally per- 
ceived two fat bass-viols and several 



slender coffins containing violins pro- 
ceeding toward the ruined abbey, the 
latter still closed to the public, even to 
those with tickets for the first place. 

It was an animated sight. The ex- 
temporized tables, the bar arranged along 




GENTLEMEN OF THE ORCHESTRA. 



a low ruined wall, whose fallen stones 
offered seats to the drinkers, were occu- 
pied by moving throngs, amongst which 
I ceased not to pursue the trail of my 
fugitive hat, and of that unaccountable 
Fortnoye for whose discovery my hat- 
hunt was but a pretext. For a quarter 
of an hour, with my eyes wide open, did 
I turn to the cardinal points of this 
mighty funnel, boxing the compass of 
Allerheiligen, when the sound of pop- 
ping champagne-corks arrested my ear. 
No better indication of my man could 
be thought of. I posted myself near the 
drinkers, who turned out to be a party 
of students, and sought an excuse to 
enter into conversation with them, not 
despairing of finding in the group some 
who had disgraced themselves with Fort- 
noye the night before. 

A quick young collegian anticipated 
me. Instantly observing my tin box, he 
said very courteously, " Are you a bot- 
anist, sir?" As I was about to profit by 



the interview to lead up to the subject of 
Fortnoye, he continued : " I am a bot- 
anist myself: I am studying for the pro- 
fession of drugs. If you would find an 
excellent field, go five miles from here, 
to the base of the Tiberg. The Ana- 
gallis Arvensis grows there in abun- 
dance. Your health, sir !" 

The whole party rose, touched glasses 
and trooped off laughing, not without 
reason : the plant adorned with so much 
fine Latin is no other than the chick- 
weed, oftener sought by canaries than 
by botanists. But I remembered how 
mercilessly I had hoaxed MacMeurtrier 
with the tobacco plants and pineapple 
fruits, and felt that I had no right to be 
too much put out. 

The vacated students' table offered 
itself invitingly, and I seated myself. 
These tables were under the agency of 
the chief forester of the estates, trans- 
formed on Sundays and holidays to an 
innkeeper. With an eye to business, 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



125 



this functionary offered no alternative to 
his guests but rabbits killed in his de- 
mesne or the ever-prevailing and mo- 
notonous ham. Among the waiters — 
whom I suspected, from the dignity of 
their chief, to be wood-choppers and 
charcoal-burners on ordinary days — I 
succeeded in making one excited indi- 
vidual listen to me. I ordered rabbit and 
Affenthaler wine : he reappeared after a 



long time with ham and beer. But I 
took care, after the first mouthful, not to 
complain, for the beer was Bavarian and 
the ham Westphalian. 

As I tasted the one and the other with 
the gusto of an epicure, suddenly my 
table, with the plates and bottles, re- 
sounded to a tinkling hail — a hail of 
money. Whence came this Danae show- 
er ? No one knew, but its effects, satis- 




AURI SACRA FAMES. 



factory to some, were for others, and 
especially myself, most deplorable. The 
peasantry from the heights around us, 
hearing the metallic ring, plunged upon 
our tables, our benches, our feet and our 
dishes, to collect the small change falling 
from the skies. It continued to rain, not 
kreutzers only, but little coins of silver. 
The instinct of avarice spread through 
all the throng ; the crowds poured down 
the hill like a landslide ; men and women, 
young girls, lads and children, all eager 
for the quarry, fought hardily for this 
uncelestial manna. Woe to the girl who 
received a kreutzer in her bodice ! she 



was not to remain the possessor. The 
waiters, sent up to pacify the fray, yield- 
ed to the game with avidity, and seemed 
to find themselves in a new California. 
The dogs, even, plunged into the loot, 
disdaining indeed the silver, but not the 
ham-bones and little saddles of rabbit. 
In the confusion the benches turned over 
on their sides, the tables on their backs, 
followed by some of the diners. My 
own lot was cast among these latter. 

I got up bareheaded and shamefaced, 
but no one had noticed my reverse. The 
rain of silver had taken another direc- 
tion, and the world, as of old, had run 



126 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



after the money. A playful dog was 
shaking and worrying a hat a few feet 
off: he readily rendered me my head- 
covering, or more properly that of Fort- 
noye. A bell gave signal that the con- 
cert was beginning. Hurrying up to the 
ruin, I posted myself outside the door, 




THE DEBRIS. 



where all the holders of first-class places 
necessarily defiled before me: not a 
single Fortnoye ! 

What an unfortunate notion was mine, 
to chase this invisible and possibly chi- 
merical enigma into the ruined wilderness 
of All-Saints ! Had I taken the morn- 
ing train, I should be already at Stras- 
burg. The interior of the abbey, now 
overflowing with music, tempted me to 
enter. 

Truly, the picture was original, The 
orchestra and the orpheonists filled the 
sacred apsis. Despoiled of their stained 
glass, the long Gothic windows were 
painted instead with the distant land- 
scape and the gilded summits of moun- 
tainous crags. The audience was divided 
into two portions or categories : the first 
occupied impromptu benches, laid from 
base to base of the fallen pillars ; the 
second stood up behind. Authorized by 
my ticket to mingle with the first, my 
entrance among the hindmost obliged 
me to content myself with the last. 

The overture to Mendelssohn's Antig- 
one had already been executed, as well 
as a fine choral of Louis Lacombe's, and 
I had a brief glimpse of the collected 
performers — a tableau full of piquant 
German character, and worthy to rank 
with Hogarth's picture representing the 



opera of Judith. My view was a short 
one, for, the sun coming out from behind 
a cloud, every lady in the parquet open- 
ed out the implement she carried, which 
was no circumscribed and feeble sun- 
shade, but a liberal umbrella, provided 
in view of a possible storm like that of 
yesterday. The men delayed not 
to imitate the example, and my in- 
spection of the performance was 
intercepted by a bubbling sea of 
variegated hemispheres. Mean- 
time, my own position among the 
poorer multitude was flooded with 
hot sunshine : I lost no time in 
changing it; and a lusty elder 
tree, clinging to the ruined wall 
eS' just behind me, offered me a natu- 
~\ ral sunshade more agreeable than 
the circular shadow of the best re- 
genschirm in Germany. The perch 
offered me another advantage. It 
placed me in a post of observation where 
I could interpret the secret of the mys- 
terious shower of gold. 

At the base of the hillock which I oc- 
cupied a group of students were whis- 
pering and busying themselves over some 
stealthy preparation. In the ringleadei 
I recognized my disciple of drugs, the 
same who had suggested a botanizing 
tour after chickweed. He held a sack, 
containing probably a provision of cop- 
per change, and each of the band, rum- 
maging in his pockets, added a supply 
of small moneys, and even of silver : as 
for my druggist, he drew forth a handful 
of gold, whose opulent gleam was clear- 
ly visible to me in my hiding-place. 
When he had mixed a portion of this in 




PLAYFULNESS. 



THE NEW HYPERION 



127 



the bag, the whole conspiracy of tempt- 
ers busied themselves in flinging it over 
the wall amongst the mass of second- 
class auditors, whose ranks I had just 
left. And the scenes of dinner-time 
were not tardy in recurring — the scram- 
ble, the bickering, the topsy-turvy and 
the chaos. 

Poor Germany! I thought: is it thus 
she distributes the gold just wrung from 



bleeding France ? With her nouveaux 
riches tempted only to senseless freaks, 
and her lower classes famished as ever, 
it is little profit she will get from her un- 
digested wealth. The spectacle, testify- 
ing to nothing so much as to the misery 
of the German populace, saddened me 
more than it diverted me. I was still 
thinking about it when the sun, having 
seen all it cared about of the concert, 




<\ \^ 



HOGARTHIAN GROUP. 



re-ente r ed its tent of clouds, and every 
umbrella, with simultaneous promptness, 
changed from a hemisphere to a straight 
line. I passed into the enclosure once 
more, just before the finale. I got a bet- 
ter place than at first, and enjoyed a full 
view of the singers and the instrument- 
alists. 

Among the former I remarked a per- 
former who gesticulated a good deal more 
than he sang, and whose looks were con- 
stantly turned toward myself. His coun- 



tenance seemed American in its outlines, 
and bore a likeness to the countenance 
of James Athanasius Grandstone. But 
how was it possible to suppose that in- 
dividual amongst these professionals ? 
Nevertheless, it was strictly and identical- 
ly he. 

I had known many students of phar- 
macy : never had any of them fed the 
multitude with gold. I had met many 
an American wine-seller : never one who 
had fitted himself to compete with Ger- 



128 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




THE PARASOL. 



man musicians. It was a day of sur- 
prises. After seeing Jupiter raining gold 
under the metamor- 
phosis of a Heidelberg 
student, it remained to 
me to see my compa- 
triot, who could hard- 
ly hold his own at col- 
lege in a " Gaudeamus 
igitur" in the guise of 
an orpheonist. At the 
side of Athanasius, 
singing or not sing- 
ing, but with mouths 
wide open all the 
same, and in every 
hand a scroll of music, 
stood his whole din- 
ner-table of Epernay. 
The circle that had 
enjoyed the Eleusinian mysteries of the 
wine-cellar, even to the little caustic 
hunchback, and that had started with 
Grandstone to pass his birthday at the 
Falls of Schaffhausen, was reunited here 
at Achern, needing only myself to form 
the clasp. Near the witty dwarf, and 
bending over the same sheet, I recognized 
a pale face, with a red boss in the mid- 
dle : it was palpably MacMeurtrier, the 
homceopathist, preceded by his ardent 
nose. How came this Scotchman in the 
group ? 

But I was not at the end of my aston- 
ishments. As I made my way through 
the dispersing crowd which separated 
me from the performers, I ran against 
an individual. Looking up, I recognized 
my hat : the obstacle was Fortnoye ! I 
quickly had an explanation of all these 
wonders. 

In the railway-carriage which had con- 
veyed the birthday party to Strasburg, 
Grandstone and his friends had formed 
a plan with Fortnoye to meet all together 
at the musical festival of Achern. The 
homceopathist, for his part, bound like- 
wise for Schaffhausen, had run upon the 
whole convivial group in the Krone Ho- 
tel at that spot. The embossed dwarf — 
whom it will be more civil to call here- 
after by his real name of Somerard — 
had attacked him in a moment as lawful 
yrey. Strange to say, the encounter 



begun in jest had terminated confidential- 
ly : something imperturbable and canny 
about the Scot proved attractive to the 
hunchback, subject himself to all the 
irregular vivacities so often noticed in 
his kind. MacMurtagh or Meurtrier, 
having disarmed his waspish opponent 
by dint of stolid calm, was destined to 
yet another victory : at the close of a 
long evening's conversation on homoe- 
opathy, Somerard, always ailing and 
doctor-hunting, declared himself a con- 
vert. The famous combination of veg- 
etable magnetism with similia similibus 
curantur\i2.d fascinated him. This target 
of the wit's former scorn-, this heron on 
stilts, this man with double knee-pans, 
recognized from a sketch of Hogarth's, 
had become his veneration and comfort. 
Grandstone, over a cigar, confided to 
me the details of this strange partner- 
ship : "I don't know what to think. 
They'll persuade me that I have seen 
the cure with my own eyes. This Scotch- 




AMATEUR PERFOKMEKb. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



129 



man, who doesn't look particularly like 
the devil, pretends that he can make the 
force of the sap in young trees commu- 
nicate itself to his patients. He makes 
his magnetic passes all the while, you 
see. Now, I myself have been with 
Foster when he read letters through his 
forehead : I'm not prepared to say there 
is not something in magnetism. But 
you ought to hear the rigmaroles that 
Murtagh says over his patients : the 
greatest rot you ever listened to ! And 
he says he can straighten up any case 
of spinal curvature. I have seen Som- 
erard hugging a young poplar tree by 
the hour. When he came away he said 
he felt perfectly full of sap. What I'll 
ask you to explain is, that the tree cer- 
tainly drooped and turned out the wrong 
side of its leaves." 

It appeared to me that my mercantile 
young American was half a convert him- 
self. Having remarked that Somerard, 
who was rich enough for the luxury, had 
actually engaged the Scotchman as pro- 
fessional companion, he proceeded to 
account for the presence of his band 
among the performers rather than among 
the audience. It seems they had come 
on foot through the Forest from Freiburg 
in the Breisgau, whither the railway had 
transported them from Bale. On their 
tramp they had fallen in with a contin- 
gent of the grand orpheonist army. 
They had dined with them, supped with 
them, slept in the same barn. Next day 
they had awaked to find themselves fast 
friends, and it had seemed good to all 
hands to remain united, even within the 
precincts of art. 

While Grandstone, in satisfying my 
surprises, suggested so many new ones, 
I did not lose from view Fortnoye, the 
man of mystery, and my rival in the 
pretty hotel at Carlsruhe. He was speak- 
ing with the forester, no doubt on the 
subject of champagne. Their colloquy 
finished, I approached and offered him 
hfs hat. 

"Ah, monsieur," he said, laughing 
pleasantly, " you are, then, my unknown 
room-mate ? You must have taken me 
for a thief. But where have I seen you 
ere now ?" 
9 




VEGETABLE MAGNETISM. 



I replied promptly: "At Strasburg, 
where I sat at the same table with you 
and your new Masonic convert, Mac- 
Meurtrier here. Possibly, also, you saw 
me last night when you put hors de com- 
bat your friends the students, and divert- 
ed all the hotel-waiters from attending 
to me." 

"A truce to these follies," he replied. 
"I am winding up my bachelor life." 

"Are you thinking of marriage?" I 
asked with unnecessary interest. 

"Who knows ?" 

"Pardon!" said I, "but I have heard 
much of you lately : it was at Carlsruhe, 
at the boarding-house — " 

He blushed faintly: "You know the 
lady who keeps the house where I put 
up ?" 

" Francine ? I knew her as a baby : I 
brought her news of her father, whom I 
had just left at Noisy." 

" Hullo !" (The French for the excla- 
mation, I think, was "Tiens ! tiens !") " I 
saw him the same day as you. I know 
you now, monsieur : you are the man 
with the two chickens." 




FJ^JEtT IX. 



ASTRAY IN THE BLACK FOREST. 




THE LAKE OF UNDINES. 



YOUR vilest matchmaker is Death. 
Year after year he weds the tender 
and the base. His call, even as Keats's 
purer bird, is heard through every age 
"alike by emperor and clown." What 
avails our protest ? From time to time 
some delicate prince, first conscious of the 
130 



natural, helpless antipathy, shall idly ask, 
for humanity's Caesars and Alexanders, 
whether they must come to this fashion 
i' the earth; and Death's groomsman 
the gravedigger sings twice or thrice, 
"Oh, a pit of clay for to be made for 
such a guest is meet." Again and again 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



some wild Constance, morbid bride of 
corruption, shall shriek, "Arise forth 
from the couch of lasting night," and 
offer her maniac kiss to the "detestable 
bones," and put her eyeballs in the 
"vaulty brows." And Death, more hor- 
rible than any diieg?ie complaisante, re- 




LL-FAME AND INNOCENCE. 



ceives with his own grin his pennies 
from the filmy eyes. Our fine delicacy 
is nothing, our choice is impotent. 

And Beauty shall be laid in Yorick's 
bed, for innocence must slumber with 
the clown to-night, and in the grave is 
no device nor difference. 

I am approaching the most serious part 
of my story. I should be sorry for the 
reader to think that Paul Flemming can 
occupy himself with only dilettante studies 
and ballads of travel. Fill thyself with 
angrier ink, O pen that long since wrotest 
the dirge of Emma of Ilmenau : do thy 
spiriting darkly, as when, by those lone 
banks of Neckar, there fell a star from 



heaven ! I have no plain and easy tale 
to tell this morning, and I must needs 
fortify myself, as in the old time, with the 
old words, when I said, "O thou poor 
authorling ! reach a little deeper into the 
human heart. Touch those strings — 
touch those deeper strings, and more 
boldly, or the notes will die 
away like whispers." 

It is now four or five years 
since a lonely and beautiful 
woman, hurrying across the 
wealthy plains of Belgium 
<= _ with an infant in her arms, 

was forced to pause at Brus- 
sels. When she rose from a 
sick bed the angel of death 
had stolen from her bosom 
the little tender babe, and 
had laid the poor abortive 
being in the cemetery of 
Laaken. Just able at length 
to walk, she stole to the 
churchyard to bid a last 
adieu to the grave, for un- 
controllable reasons urged 
her speedy departure from 
Belgium. " Take care of the 
poor flowers," she said, put- 
ting money into the hand of 
a stolid sexton. Then, in a 
voice all broken with sobs, 
"Ah, darling, darling little 
daughter \ why cannot I stay 
near you ? What gentle eye 
-- 3 will ever dwell on your sweet 

grave when your mother her- 
self abandons you ? W h o 
will tend these desolate little roses and 
violets ?" 

"I will!" said a voice which seemed 
to rise upon the wind. She looked 
around, but saw nobody : was the sound 
a lingering echo of delirium ? She came 
in haste next day at an early hour snatch- 
ed with difficulty from the routine of 
travel. The grave was already covered 
with fresh plants for all its petty length, 
and guarded with a grating of iron. " My 
prayers are answered," said the poor 
traveler. When she had gone a figure 
approached the tomb from the nearest 
clump of cypresses. It was a young man 
of vigorous proportions, but with a face 



3 2 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



worn and saddened with anxiety. He 
laid his hand upon the rail. "Poor 
baby!" said he, "it is in the name of 
maternity !" 

After that no week passed by but the 
young philanthropist returned, darkly 
studying the bed where chance had laid 
the baby-bride of Eternity. He was a 



home-sick Frenchman, and truly few 
young men but those of the Latin race 
would be capable of an action generous, 
yet uncalled-for and slightly mock-heroic. 
Only briefly a resident of Brussels, and 
driven thither by a schoolboy's manifes- 
tation which had been viewed in a po- 
litical aspect, he had formed the habit 




FALLS AT ALLERHEILIGEN. 



of promenading in the cemetery. The 
small creature, hidden in the grave with- 
out ever having met his eye, became for 
him an interest and an object in life. 
He visited no one else, avoiding even 
the other refugees tempted by bank- 
ruptcy or ill-fortune into the friendly ter- 
ritory. Sick for his native land, he es- 
tablished a parallel between himself and 
this tiny stranger withered on a foreign 
soil. It lived in his fancy as a pallid 
cherub, and alternated with imperfect 
visions of a graceful lady half seen 



among the trees. His constant visits 
were noticed, and with no friendly eyes. 

"What would you think, yourself, 
Flemming?" said Grandstone, who re- 
cited, as we strolled toward the cascades 
of Allerheiligen, the history from which 
I have condensed this shadowy little 
idyl. 

"I think he was Quixotic, but a fine 
fellow." 

"They didn't think him very fine in 
Brussels," said my young countryman. 
"You see, they don't give a hearty wel- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



33 



come in Belgian society to French ref- 
ugees, being more used to fellows that 
have jumped their bail or to gentlemen 
of the Rochefort order than they are to 
Don Quixotes. It was too bad, though, 
the things they dared to drop about that 
baby and its supposed father. ' We had 
better part,' said the landlord who lodged 



him near the cemetery : ' there are too 
many of your family in our fajbourg.' 1 

"Was he obliged to move away, then, 
from the grave he had tended so gen- 
erously ?" 

" It was of the less importance, for his 
banishment from French soil was repeal- 
ed. Before departing he came once 




LADDER OK BRIDG 



more to the churchyard of Laaken. He 
left a considerable sum with the sexton, 
making him promise to keep the place 
in his special care. Nothing could be 
more handsome of Fortnoye." 

— For it was again of Fortnoye, the 
eternal, the inevitable Fortnoye, that the 
tale was told. I had been repeating to 
Grandstone his riddling words about an 
approaching matrimonal project on his 
part. The former continued : 

"Do you fancy that even if he wants 
to marry, a girl who goes over the coun- 



try with undecipherable and mysterious 
babies is the wife for our whimsical, scru- 
pulous Paladin ? It was a pure infamy, 
though, to invent that coarse slander 
about him and the child." 

" But who is the supposed mother of 
the infant ?" 

" Why, don't you see ? Her godmoth- 
er is well known at Brussels, where she 
shut her door against the adventuress. 
Of course it is your pretty hostess of 
Carlsruhe." 

" What ! Francine Joliet ? The infamy 



134 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



is in attaching any kind of mystery to 
that lovely creature's conduct." 

I was proceeding to defend my dainty 
Francine at greater length 
when our dialogue was in- 
terrupted by a simultaneous «==_- 
cry. It was a cry of de- £2^ 
light, for we had now mount- ~ 3=* 
ed the hills, those sunny _f^E 
summits which had filled so 
beautifully the arches of the 
ruined windows in the ab- 
bey, and the cascades of 
Allerheiligen were before 
us. From the eminence we 
had reached, stretched out 
in their silver length, were 
unfolded to our sight the 
multiplied cataracts, like 
twenty rivers standing story 
over story. 

Our comrades were wait- 
ing for us a little farther 
on, Fortnoye among them : 
as we neared each other I 
stepped briskly up to him 
and grasped his hand, a 
manoeuvre which seemed 
considerably to surprise 
him. It was a salute pro- 
ceeding from the grave at 
Laaken. 

Swelled by the tributes of the Murg, 
the Enz and the numerous water-courses 
that drain the Black Forest, the falls of 
Allerheiligen have torn their way through 
a rocky tract, whose points of resistance 
have looped up the stream into numerous 
draperies. Formerly, to trace these cata- 



Later, a series of ladders was thrown 
from peak to peak, where travelers with 
strong heads might clamber at their slip- 




SAINT SATAN. 




racts through their whole length, the for- 
ester or hunter was obliged to slide over 
dangerous crags at the risk of his life. 



pery will. At present, the whole is ar- 
ranged for the tourist with plank-walks, 
rails and bridges ; yet many of the latter, 
in the history of the evolution pursued 
by Allerheiligen, remain in a state of 
partial development, and hesitate gid- 
dily between ladder and bridge. 

The country-folk from the musical 
festival crowded the stairways, where the 
spray from the torrent baptized a won- 
derful variety of rustic costumes. I es- 
sayed a rude sketch of the scene, but 
the fantastic embossed man, Somerard, 
by dint of flying and capricoling about 
me, and professing ecstasy at the effect 
of the blank paper, destroyed my draw- 
ing before it was begun. As we crossed 
from the left bank to the right one I 
plucked a fine gentian, and opened my 
tin box to receive it : I found already in 
the cavity a sheaf of nettles. Evidently 
the dwarf about to become a giant had 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



*35 



chosen me as his victim for the day. 
As I shook a finger at him he puffed up 
quite globularly with laughter : perhaps 



in elongating he would grow more wise ; 
and so, with jokes and Joe Millers, we 
took leave of Allerheiligen, ever memor- 




LAKESIDE REVERIES. 



able for its processions of buffo charac- 
ters trailing between the coulisses of a 
grand, austere landscape. 

At the entrance to the little grove 
where I had found such a lively scene 
of rendezvous in the morning were num- 




ASPIRATION. 



bers of cabs and carts. Grandstone, 
Fortnoye, the homceopathist, Somerard, 
two other champagne - feasters from 



Epernay, a chance friend whom Grand- 
stone had seduced from among the orph- 
eonists, and myself, formed a little drama 
of eight persons. We engaged two carts. 
Grandstone went to direct the peasant 
who drove. I supposed we were on the 
return to Achern. 

"To the Mummelsee!" said Grand- 
stone. 

" Is that the place where we are to 
dine?" I asked, rather absently, with a 
regret flung backward at my breakfast, 
interrupted by the shower of gold. 

"We dine at the Hirsch." 

" Why not at Achern ? I shall certain- 
ly take the evening train for Paris. My 
chum Hohenfels must be almost a ma- 
niac by this time." 

"We take the Paris train too : at least, 
if not for Paris, as far along as Epernay. 
But, you innocent, do you suppose peo- 
ple come to Allerheiligen without going 
to the Mummelsee ?" 

"What is a Mummelsee ?" 

"The Mummelsee is the Lake of Un- 
dines," said Somerard. 

"And where is this Lake of Undines ?" 

"At the Mummelsee." 

It appeared unnecessary to prolong 
this circular argument. Besides, the 
term " Lake of Undines " had a soft ring- 
to my ear. We rode through a gentle 
valley toward Oberkappel, exchanging 
the din of the Funnel for the completest 
pastoral silence, punctuated here and 
there by the notes of the birds. Our 
party did little to disturb the scene : some 
smoked, with the grateful taciturnity of 
smokers ; some slept at the bottom of 



i 3 6 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



the carts, where even Somerard, rocked 
in the cradle of his back, forgot his 
pranks in a succession of falsetto snores. 
For my part, I mused on a certain arti- 
sanne cap at Carlsruhe. Surely that milk- 



white talisman was without a smirch, 
notwithstanding Grandstone's careless 
tales and a censorious world. Fortnoye 
had not spoken with blame of the gentle 
girl ; and she, as I reflected with a pang, 




FALLS OF SCHAFFHAUSEN. 



was so shy, so grateful, so devoted in 
speaking of him ! 

Suddenly, as I saw the floating cap- 
strings very distinctly before me, they 
gave a smart crack like a whiplash. 
We had arrived at the " Hirsch." I must 
have been nodding. 

The Hirsch is a large gasthaus, an or- 
dinary stopping - place for drovers, for 



clock-sellers, or for the intelligent tourist 
bound for the Lake of Undines. Placed 
between the route for Wurtemberg and 
that for the Mummelsee, it presents on 
the side toward the latter the form of a 
large chalet, where you can enter by a 
human-looking doorway, and have the 
range of two stories of chambers. On 
the side of the Wurtemberg road you 




AN UNSOCIAL COMPANION. 



find but one floor, and an entrance into 
a garret like a hay-mow : it is the loss 
of level between the Seebach valley and 
the slopes of the Black Forest. We en- 
tered a large, low, whitewashed room, 



furnished with limping tables and chairs 
of unassuming rustic-work. One orna- 
ment was on the wall, a tinted wood-cut 
of Waldhantz the Poacher. 

Germany has plenty of legendary Wild 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



137 



Huntsmen, but the jolly Waldhantz is 
the appurtenance of the Black Forest. 
This amiable being, the king of poach- 




AN ACCIDENT. 



ers, used to course the woods with an in- 
genious little gun, easily concealed, and 
Saint Hubert took good care to keep his 
gamebag filled. But one day he met a 
sinister-looking black-haired personage, 
resembling more the Prophet of Evil 
than the good Saint Hubert. 

" Good - day, Waldhantz!" said the 
stranger sulphurously. 

"Good-day, Satan!" replied the bold 
poacher. 

"What is that droll little thing in your 
hand?" 

"That? Oh, it is my pipe. Do you 
smoke ?" 

" Show me how to use it. Is your pipe 
illed?" 

"It is." And Waldhantz, who had 
conceived the beneficent idea of ridding 
the world of its arch-enemy, put the bar- 
rel up to the smiling lips of his new 
acquaintance. 



"Have you your flint there? Now 
light." With a prayer to Hubert, Wald- 
hantz fired his fowling-piece. When the 
smoke cleared away Saint 
Satan was seen in good form, 
but coughing out clouds of 
buckshot. " What strong to- 
bacco you use !" he said with 
a queer wink. Waldhantz 
had the glory of endeavor, 
but not of success. It suf- 
ficed him, however, for en- 
during fame. 

The rays of the sun were 
getting level. We provided 
ourselves with alpenstocks, 
and with another bit of iron- 
shod wood called a guide. 
Our course lay along the riv- 
ulet which descends from the 
Mummelsee. I had intended 
to talk seriously with Fort- 
noye on the route, but the 
steepness of the ascent for- 
bade conversation. Although 
I leaned affectionately on the 
scapulary angle of the guide, 
I panted like an August cart- 
dog. To add to my humili- 
ation, as I painfully divided 
off the pathway I perceived 
overhead, leaping goatlike 
from rock to rock, a Titan scaling the 
mountains, the patient of our homceop- 
athist, Somerard of the mocking eye. 
For one moment I was ready to believe 
in the vegetable-magnetic theory of the 
doctor, who 
toiled inade- 
quately after on 
his interminable 
legs. 

A grand basin 
turned by some 
puissant potter 
in the arid clay 
of the surround- 
ing hills — lead- 
en waters, stag- 
nant and thick, 
without fish 
within or insects 
or flowers above, 
see. Evidently as birds will only breed 




THE REAR. 



-such is the Mummel- 



138 



THE NEW HYPERION 



in an untouched nest, the Undines de- 
mand for their lodgment a massive laver 
sacred from profane company. 

At times, however, the Mummelsee is 
stirred from its depths, and that too when 
no wind is breathing. The leaves do 
not flutter in the forest, the raven's breast 
is not curled as he sails motionless over 
the lake. The strange agitation is soul- 
thrilling and terrible. The nymphs who 
live below in bowers of coral (it is prob- 
ably the only instance known of the 
coral-builder as a fresh - water polyp) 
come to the surface in the full of every 
moon. They come up like bubbles and 
disport on the surface, where their gleam- 
ing, moonlight-washed bodies seem to 
be lilies blushing into roses. When the 
cock crows the frolic and jest, the wan- 
ton diving and swimming, cease in a 
moment, and the nymphs plunge to wait 
for another full moon. Sometimes the 
dawn surprises them : then there ap- 
pears a dreadful Uncle Kuhleborn, a 
dwarfish ugly monster, who threatens 
them and drives them headlong into the 
lake, and the waters are left dull and 
sullen. Once the lasses of Seebach were 
surprised at their spinning by a lovely 
apparition, a fair girl who sat among 
them and spun from her ivory wheel a 
thread like foun- 
tain-spray. She 
always left them 
at one hour, but 
the son of the 
house set back 
the clock, and 
that night she 
went hastily to 
the Mummelsee 
and threw her- 
self into the wa- 
ter. Then a 
complaining 
sound was 
heard, and the 
lake began to 
" VIZZ \" foam and boil. 

But the young 
nan, infatuated, flung himself into the 
vhirlpool, and then the water was still, 
but the spinning Undine appeared no 
more. 



(■: -w 




We stretched ourselves on a hillock, 
as appositely as possible for the visit of 
any fairy with ivory wheel or a foam- 
spinning distaff, but our receptive state 
was not honored with an apparition. 




THE SICK-BED. 



We lay and caressed our alpenstocks 
beside this small parody of the Dead 
Sea, beside this flat frog-pond for whose 
sake we had gone aside from Achern 
and committed ourselves to a journey. 
Some of those green-coated musicians, 
the frogs, began to be audible in the sedgy 
banks, and reminded me for a moment 
of the young apprentice in green who 
had long ago sung to me to "beware." 
The worst of it was that MacMurtagh, 
the Scotch charlatan, began to take me, 
as if he might follow the lead of his em- 
ployer, for the butt of his clumsy badi- 
nage. 

"Oh !" I said casually, "this is a poor 
exchange for the cascades of Allerheil- 
igen !" 

" — Which are themselves a lame sub- 
stitute for the falls we have just seen at 
Schaffhausen," said the Scot. " Ah, Mr. 
Flemming, you have seen nothing ! If 
you had been privileged, like us, to be 
at Schaffhausen, while reading at the 
same time the matchless description of 
Ruskin !" And the doctor began to re- 
cite, through his red nose, and with the 
utmost disenchantment of a strong Scotch 
brogue, a long passage beginning " Stand 
for an hour at the Falls of SchafThausen." 

Grandstone, wearying rapidly of this 
entertainment, turned to me with a groan. 
" Don't you smoke ?" said he. 

The incense from a number of mouths 
was curling among the mists of the Mum- 
melsee. MacMurtagh interrupted him- 
self: "Mr. Flemming smokes only by 



THE NEW HYPERIOX. 



139 




TRUTH AND HER FAVORITE 
WELL. 



proxy and with the aid of four negroes," 
he said ironically, alluding to my little 
quiz upon him at Strasburg. 

I laughed good - naturedly enough. 
"You really must forgive me," I said. 
"When I popped that joke on you it was 
in r e m e m- 
brance of the 
duke of Missis- 
sippi, to whom 
m y dear Frau 
Kranich intro- 
d u c e d me at 
Ems, and who, 
she assured me, 
kept a private 
secretary to 
' smoke to him.' 
As for the 
S c h a fTh a u sen 
falls, if you were 
acquainted with 
my former history you would know that 
I saw them in those same old times, be- 
fore you were born. Since then I have 
grown lazy. I no longer take tobacco, 
even by proxy : in revenge I take my 
waterfalls infinitessimally diluted, at the 
hands of a homceopathist !" 

Fortnoye, stretched apart from the rest, 
on his pelvis and his two elbows, formed 
a sort of tripod. To escape from the 
recoil of my shot at MacMurtagh, I went 
up and offered him a penny for his 
thoughts. He turned to me a face that 
was surprising for its depth and tender- 
ness of expression. " I am thinking of 
a fain-," said he, "whom if I had the 
power I would bid arise this moment out 
of yonder lake." I know not why it was 
— I am sure I was torn with jealousy — 
but on that I gave him my hand for the 
second time. 

In order to get an idea of the dignity 
of the hills on which the Black Forest is 
planted, our younger men had determin- 
ed to ascend the Hornisgrinde, an ex- 
cursion which would occupy the remain- 
der of the day. This is the most elevated 
peak of a range which extends from 
Sassbachwalden to Oberkappel. For my 
part, I started in the rear of the party, 
but with a covert determination to bota- 
nize and sketch in such a manner as to 



be left entirely behind. The fatigues of 
the morning had already told on my 
knees, which felt curiously uncertain 
under me, and I was wiping my brow 
already when my companions had 
mounted the first hillock. As for the 
short gentleman, the lively Somerard, he 
departed for the loftiest peaks like an 
eagle, and as if the best the Schwarzwald 
had to show were all insufficient for his 
desires. 

My own rearward location, however, 
soon became the most popular one. In 
a short time I saw our guide returning to 
the lake, and looking like a Savoyard 
with his monkey as he carried the am- 
bitious Somerard on his shoulder. He 
had fallen all of a heap in the pathway. 
MacMurtagh, who with the rest followed 
the descending cortege, said that it was 
a superexcitation of the assimilative or- 
gans, the result of an overdose of young 
ash tree in the morning, aggravated by 
the rarer air of the heights. 

At the Hirsch, where we hardly arrived 
before nightfall, the table was alreadv 




ONB OF THE CHORU: 



set, and we found to our wonder at each 
plate a noble bottle of champagne label- 
ed Le Brun, of which house Fortnoye 
was a special agent. " The Le Brun 
brand," said he carelessly, as if to con- 
ceal the generositv of his handsome 



4 o 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



treat, 'you'll find the most honest and 
conscientious of all the champagnes." 
This surprise, arranged over-night by 
our invaluable companion, put us all in 



good humor and obliterated our fatigues, 
except those of poor Somerard, for whom 
a bed was laid in a corner of the great 
room. The invincible dwarf, sociable to 




BROKEN SLUMBERS. 



the last, feebly applauded with his hands 
when he saw the sierra of bottles stretch- 
ed along the table. 

As the repast proceeded some rather 
effervescent talk was heard, and witti- 
cisms and good things were not wanting. 
Fortnoye, the prophet and interpreter of 
the vintage, while continually adding to 
the fund of wit, maintained that the whole 
exhibition was due less to our natural 
ingenuity than to qualities inherent in 
the Le Brun brand. He argued that he 
could recognize its true effect in our gay 
but not silly repartees. This gift, he 
pleaded, was the special one of the cham- 
pagne he represented, and thereupon he 
developed a most extraordinary theory, 
which he claimed to have been years in 
forming. Let him hear, he said, such 
and such a bright speech, such and such 
a sarcastic reply, and he could tell wheth- 
er it were born under the influence of 
a sparkling or a still wine. At need he 
believed he could specify the very part 
of the Marne departement where the 
speech or the sarcasm had been ferment- 
ed and put in stock, whether at Rheims, 
Epernay, Avize or Sillery. In his opin- 
ion, Moet tended rather to imagination 
than to mirth, Montebello inspired musing 



rather than conversation, while Clicquot 
turned naturally to politics; and so on 
with twenty obscurer labels, which he 
ranged under general headings, such as 
"wines of wit," wines "patriotic," or 







"anecdotic," or "hearty," or "jolly," or 
even "a little broad." 

The theory amused us abundantly, 
and I gave with the rest my vote for the 
classification of Fortnoye, without letting 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



141 




INTELLIGENCE. 



him know how many prejudices I had 
been forced to conquer before coming 
over to his side. 
Fortnoye, in 
accepting our 
comments and 
administering 
some vigorous 
strokes of his 
own, had nev- 
er got the bet- 
ter of a sort of 
dreamy gravity 
which seemed 
habitual with 
him. 

This man 
had seemed to 
me at Epernay 
a mere profi- 
cient in vulgar 
horseplay : at 
the house in 
Carlsruhe I 
learned to 
think him a suspicious character. En- 
gaged as I had been in his pursuit by a 
ridiculous accident and a peevish curios- 
ity, I had him now face to face without 
the ability to see him clearly. Which 
was the true Fortnoye — the ambu- 
lant wine-agent, the poet, the phi- 
lanthropist or the buffoon ? They 
were all present in one, but the buf- 
foon was disguised in the philoso- 
pher's mantle : his thoughts laughed 
oftener than his features. A keen, 
discriminating mind leaped up from 
the wine-cask, like Truth from her 
fabled well. As for the heart, I 
had but to trust the God's acre at 
Laaken for that. There remained 
but one more quality of Fortnoye's 
to test him in — that of bard. 

At dessert I invited him to sing 
some of his own songs. He com- 
plied by rolling out more than one 
brindisi. They were transparently 
joyous, light-hearted and sincere, 
like fragments of Burns : at the mo- 
ment of the most hilarious expres- 
sion of gayety they were furnished with 
a penetrating note of pathos or senti- 
ment, which, shaded in the most ex- 



quisite manner by the manly voice of 
the singer, sent the strangest thrill of 
sympathy into the pleasure with which 
we listened, and matched our delighted 
ears with an accompaniment of swim 
ming eyes. We joined in the choruses 
with absolute fury : the German orphe- 
onist contributed to these refrains some 
variations and Tyrolean jodels which 
enlivened if they did not entirely follow 
them ; and the sick Somerard, deter- 
mined not to be forgotten at his corner, 
piped in the choir like a friendly steam- 
whistle. The fairies must have heard it 
all in their lake with feelings of envy. 

Already, at several attempts, our two 
drivers had striven to detach us from 
the table. The night, they said, was 
gloomy, and it would be perilous cross- 
ing the valleys of Kappel and Seebach 
after it was too late to see the heads of 
the horses before us. We paid small at- 
tention. "One song more!" we cried, 
and still Fortnoye, with his grave en- 
thusiasm, sang of cheer and hospitality, 
and the German vocalist, lashed to his 
utmost endeavors, sent forth his voice in 
Tyrolean exercises that resembled a 
syrupy liquid blobbing forth from a gi- 




THE BLACK FOREST. 



gantic champagne-bottle. At last we 
rose, and the charioteers cracked their 
whips with the relish of anticipation 



142 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



Doctor MacMurtagh, who had vainly- 
endeavored to secure a hearing for cer- 
tain effusions of Allan Cunningham and 
the Ettrick Shepherd, now declared his 
patient unfit to bear the jolts of the 
wagon. He refused to leave his charge. 
Grandstone, too, said it would be dis- 
loyal to quit Somerard's bedside. Fort- 
noye declared that wine - merchants 
should work in harmony, and governed 
his conduct by Grandstone's. The two 
natives of Epernay were glad of an ex- 
cuse to stay with Fortnoye ; the orpheon- 
ist, cracking a fresh bottle, found himself 
very well where he was, and promised to 
spend the night at table ; and I, for my 



part — what could I do against such a 
formidable majority ? "Resolved" said 
Fortnoye, "That to return to Achern 
without M. Somerard would be an act 
of treason which the remotest posterity 
would brand on us as a crime." (" Hear ! 
hear!" said the congress.) "Resolved, 
As Doctor Meurtrier yonder promises to 
set his patient up again by morning with 
the aid of a few juleps of poplar and 
birch tree, that we engage in another 
little project. Resolved, That we gain on 
foot to-morrow, not Achern again, but 
Appenweier, a nearer town, and a sta- 
tion where the railroad to Baden makes 
a branch to that of Kehl. We thus save 



Mp:k 




RESTING IN THE WOODS. 



time and improve our acquaintance with 
the Black Forest." 

The majority became unanimity, and 
we sent the carts rattling back to Achern. 
The landlord, not unused to making a 
bed-room out of his dining-hall, threw a 
few mattresses over the floor, where we 
stretched ourselves, rather ill at ease. 
The orpheonist alone, true to his prom- 
ise, remained all night stolidly upright 
at table, communing with a large pot of 
beer and a small bottle of Kirschwasser. 

Bright and briskly we quitted the grand 
hotel of the Stag in the morning. We 
directed our course for the little town of 
Appenweier on the road to Kehl, and 
I thought of an early return homeward, 
and an encounter with Hohenfels at 



Marly. The cows were going out to 
pasture : they knew their way better than 
James Grandstone, who volunteered to 
guide us, knew ours. Ottenhafen and 
Lautenbach left behind, we admired the 
pretty valley of Salzbach, and passed 
various tiny and almost nameless ham- 
lets, when a town came in sight — surely 
Appenweier and the Kehl railroad ! 

The town was Oppenau, and we had 
overshot the station. Grandstone was 
dismissed without arrears of wages : we 
sought a more experienced guide. Ven- 
turing into a handsome village-house 
and drinking a glass of beer, we asked 
the red-waistcoated owner for a cicerone. 
He pointed to a tall lout, a ferryman, 
who had just brought some countrymen 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



M3 



over the stream which laved the cottage 
wall. We explained to the boatman our 
wish to go to Appenweier, and he replied 
by two gestures — one an affirmative nod, 




LARGESS. 



the other an invitation with his forefinger 
to get into the boat. 

This Charon conducted us for an end- 
less time along his little river, the Rench 
or the Ramsbach. Finally, leaping out 
and not looking behind him, he march- 
ed along a woody path, and then up a 
hill. We followed, our mutual conversa- 
tion growing more and more sparse as 
our confidence decreased. This was our 
history from six o'clock A. M. until two 
in the afternoon. More than once I and 
my tin box sank to the ground for a little 
rest. Like the slave of some deceptive 
princess in the Arabian Nights, he led 
us through countless meanders, without 
answering our questions or ever once 
looking at us. At last he brought us to 
a town, and Grandstone, as the financial 
agent of the party, showered largess 
upon the guide and dismissed him, glad 
at last to have come to the termination 
of so long a walk. He made an exag- 
gerated rustic bow and plunged into the 
recesses of the town. 

At that moment I perceived on a sign- 
board the name of the place. It was not 
Appenweier. It was Freudenstadt. 

"Hurrah, boys !" — I could not forbear 
the joy of announcing our luck — "is not 
this delightful ? We are lost in the Black 
Forest ! Let us have adventures ! Let 
us quote the vagabondage of Cervantes 
and the philosophy of Gil Bias ! Let us 
adopt knight-errantry as a profession, 
charter our own association, and practice 
; Exploration of the Black Forest, by a 



Company of Musical Amateurs, lim- 
ited'!" 

" Only hear the ancient boy !" Grand- 
stone said in advance of me to the Scot, 
without thinking me so near. "Was 
there ever such a jolly old absurdity ? 
He thinks he is still at the age when he 
used to walk around Heidelberg with his 
tiresome friend the baron." 

We commenced our wilderness-life by 
getting a good comfortable dinner at the 
little tavern of Freudenstadt. The vil- 
lage proved to be a commercial centre, 
to the extent of irradiating upon a happy 
world the blessings of straw hats, glass 
mugs and musical boxes. There was a 
strange church here, constructed in some 
very remote antiquity on that cellular 
system which we pretend is most exclu- 
sively modern — the same system which 
Mr. Dickens so disapproved on his first 
visit among American prisons. The men 
and women at Freudenstadt worship in 
such privacy that they cannot see each 
other, though the preacher's desk is vis- 
ible to every one of the congregation. 

But I must render justice to the dinner. 
It was composed of cold sausage, of a 
salad, and a tart open and filled with 
Irish potatoes. It seemed to me prefer- 
able to the ordinary bill of fare at Del- 
monico's or Vefour's. But then I had 
been walking for it from six in the 
morning. It is proper, also, to celebrate 
the hotel bill : it bore not the slightest 
resemblance to my late one at Baden- 
Baden. It was computed in kreutzers, 
and cost us something like a dime each. 

Again, then, we set ourselves in mo- 
tion, having easily exhausted the com- 
mercial charms of Freudenstadt. Our 
guide, this time, was neither Grandstone 
nor the ferryman, but Accident. We 
were determined to have our souls thrill- 
ed with adventure. 

The fact is, the Black Forest, so far as 
we could see it, appeared about as safe 
and quiet as the route from Boston to 
Cambridge, and we fancied we could 
have our adventurous experience at a 
very reasonable outlay in actual risk 
Behold us lost in the Black Forest ! 




FJ^T&T X. 



A WALK TO WILDBAD 




TIME PASSES. 

"A Saw-mill in the Black Forest, May — . 

MY HOHENFELS : I have passed 
through such vicissitudes that I 
do not know the day of the month. I 
have sought in vain to turn my face to- 
ward my beloved hearthstone. I have 
drained the last drops of a bitter cup, 
which shall never be set to these lips again. 
I refer to the cup they gave me this 
144 



morning for breakfast, the beverage in 
which was of so vile and wooden a qual- 
ity that nothing shall tempt me to try its 
like while beer is to be had : I believe 
there was sawdust in the grounds. The 
bread, too, seems to be all bran here, or 
perhaps there is sawdust in that too. In 
fact, baron, I write to you this morning 
in the full disenchantment of a satisfied 
endeavor. ' Why must I be haunted ' (I 
have always said) ' by this persistent, 
importunate Me f Why cannot Paul 
Flemming lose himself?' And now I 
have lost myself, and I cannot tell you 
what a poor triumph it is. 

"Too tedious the tale to give you the 
recital of my repeated failures to meet 
you at Marly! Since the day when I 
started to rejoin you, with no greater 
eccentricity of direction than the charac- 
teristic one of going eastward when you 
and my rendezvous lay westward, — since 
that fair start there has not been a morn- 
ing when I have not been rushing to 
find. you, not a night when I have not 
prepared to throw myself upon you at 
railway speed. The accursed railway ! 
that and the perfidy of seeming friends 
have kept us apart. At this moment I 
do not know where I am, nor have I an 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



U5 



idea how to get home. I do not know 
whether Appenweier or Freudenstadt is 
the nearer town, nor in which of them I 
want to be, could I get there. I am 
passing through the Black Forest, des- 
perate and restless, with a motion in my 
wooden head like the perpetual motion 
which Wodenblock had in his timber 
leg, and which made him travel on 
through distant lands, a never-resting 
skeleton. 

" Freudenstadt was the last village that 
had its baptismal appellation written up 
on a guide-post. Since that, I have been 
stringing village on to village without 
knowing or caring for their names. Ev- 
erybody speaks a kind of jargon which 
is just enough like German for me to get 
it exquisitely wrong and set myself off 
on the wildest goose-chases. Yesterday, 
in a dim and lonely forest road, I was 
fairly frightened, for methought I heard 
eleven o'clock strike from twenty steeples 
at once : I feared my wits had fled. Go- 
ing on a few steps, I found that the illu- 
sion proceeded from a wandering clock- 
seller, who had seen me first, and had 
stopped to advertise himself by setting 
all his mechanism in motion. While I 
paused to talk with him a cuckoo flew 
out from his breast, where he had hung 
his finest timepiece : the ghostly bird, 
unpleasing even to an unmarried ear, 
__^ chimed in im- 

pertinently 
with our con- 
versation, and 
the twenty 
clocks contin- 
ued to strike 
as I asked my 
way of the fel- 
low. He an- 
swered in pa- 
tois, and the 
result of the 
whole chorus 
was indeed distracting. To make him 
talk better, I went so far as to buy a 
clock. He did indeed speak more loud- 
ly, and I understood him to say that 
beds and nourishment could be obtained 
at a neighboring mill. It has proved to 
be a saw-mill, and the beds are filled 
ro 




THE EAR DISPLEASED. 



with sawdust. If you can think of any 
more incongruous and absurd figure than 
a lost man carefully carrying a clock 
through the recesses of the Black Forest, 
you must find it in Arnim's ' Wonder- 
Horn.' I no sooner had the automaton 
in my arms — there was a neat glass globe 
over it, and the utmost delicacy of car- 
riage was required — than my one object 
in life was to find a place where I could 
set it down. 

" Soon after dismissing my clock-seller 
— and indeed his prices were moderate 
— I heard a shot in the thick of the for- 
est. I paused to listen, and directly a 
shadow was seen, faintly recalling old 
religious pictures of Saint John in the 
wilderness bearing the lamb. The Shad- 
ow fled at sight of me with extreme ra- 
pidity : I could but remark the lusty 
grace of the poacher as he made off with 
the goat dangling at his back. The in- 
cident was rather reassuring than other- 
wise, as a poacher argued proprietary 
rights, even here in the woods, and 
promised a vague connection with homes 
and haunts of men ; but he was not an 
available person of whom to ask the way, 
being more ready to show me his heels 
than his tongue. The valley which led 
to Freudenstadt I have called the Valley 
of Rasselas, for it seems impossible to 
get out of it, and I believe I am all the 
while going round in a circle. I often 
hear, behind the green draperies of the 
forest, the songs of young girls, or the 
laughter of women washing clothes 
around a spring, or the lowing of herds : 
it is like dreaming. It is an enchanted 
vale, peopled only by echoes, or by such 
quaint and picturesque types as my frei- 
schiitz and my time-bearer. Still, re- 
membering the coffee and the bread, I 
am far from satisfied, and am convinced 
that losing the omnipresent Ego is not 
so fine as German poets have said it 
would be. 

"Here there are no inns. The pil- 
grim deposits his staff in what corner so- 
ever he can. I asked one or two other 
people for the mill — a stout young wo- 
man who walked along braiding some 
fine and puerile-looking straw lace in 
her clumsy fingers, and a cowherd. I 



146 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



pursued this idea of the mill with some 
eagerness, for how could I forget, my 
own baron, that charming night we pass- 
ed together in what we called the en- 
chanted valley of Birkenau, when you 



sent the postilion right past the Wein- 
heim landlord, who stood in his door 
solicitous to bless, and when we put up 
at the old mill on the Wechsnitz, where 
by the droning wheel we recited Goethe's 




' Youth and the Millbrook' ? Ah me ! 
that incident occurred while my life was 
comparatively unclouded. It was be- 
fore I had met the Dark Ladie, and be- 
fore some other and perhaps superior 



attractions had impinged on my course 
Well-a-day ! I hope she is happy ; but ] 
am bound to confess that I do not know 
Mary Ashburton's present name, nor 
aught of her history since she married 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



147 



that traveling valet who convinced her 
that he was the Lord of Burleigh in dis- 
guise. I may have changed my views, 
I may have selected a very different 
type of female excellence ; but time 
enough for that when we meet. 

"The clock-vender's mill proved, as I 



have told you, a saw-mill. A pair of 
honest fellows were playing at draughts 
inside it, with pieces two inches broad 
hastily sawn off from sticks of brown 
and white timber; their table was a 
plank, rough from the mill, standing 
upon round and barky legs which had 




A SAW-MILL IN THE SCHWARZWALD. 



doubtless been trimmed to make the 
chequers, and rudely chalked over the 
top in a large chessboard pattern. The 
mill was stopped for the moment, the 
hungry teeth of the saw resting fixed in 
the heart of a pine. I was not put out 
too much when I found 
what kind of a labor- 
atory it was. Have I 
not somewhere con- 
fided to you my notion 
of writing a poem to 
match Goethe's, and 
to be called ' The 
Song of the Saw -mill' ? 
have I not enlarged to 
you on the beautiful 
associations of flood 
and forest that branch 
out from the theme ? 
At least, I have included, among the 
lessons of American poetry I have din- 
ned into your ears, Bryant's capital 
translation of Korner's little lyric on the 
' Saw - mill.' I accepted the substitute, 
then, and took shelter under the substi- 
tute's roof of long and fresh-made boards. 




STRAW-BRAIDING. 



I am a bird upon whose age you are 
always insisting, but I am for ever being 
caught with some variety of sweet-fla- 
vored chaff; so I fluttered confidingly in 
to the lure of the two friendly peasants. 




THE FLOWER-SPIRIT. 

The lure was a bed filled with atoms of 
wood — as was also the coffee. I have 
postponed my poem. 

"Risen with the sun, I am writing to 
you, my Hohenfels, upon the primitive 



48 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



table just described, which is worthy of 
the patriarchal ages. My wanderings 
must add immortal facts to my essay on 
Progressive Geography, though it is em- 
barrassing not to be able to find out the 
names of any of the places I encounter. 
— But what — what is the agitation which 
at this moment alarms my senses ? The 
chamber seems to be whirling around 
me ! The table is escaping from my el- 
bows, and grates over the floor in a series 
of thrills or vibrations ! Everything in 
the room is dancing and leaping, and a 
tremendous roar has begun to come in 
at the window ! They have started the 
mill! I must seek elsewhere to finish 
this scrawl." 

The fact of being leagues away from 
any probable post-office was just the in- 
citement I needed to write to the baron : 
my letter, which I never took out of my 
pocket, was but fairly begun when the 
pair of millers, having cleared away our 
poor breakfast of coffee and sausages, 
set the apparatus in motion, as I have 
said. 

As I rose a group of my fellow-pilgrims 
burst into the chamber, which was still 
furnished with the row of sawdust beds 
on which we had passed the night. 
Grandstone and Fortnoye, finger upon 
lip, brought me to the window, which 
looked out on the stream and on a little 
savage garden. "Now you can surprise 
the doctor in the very act of administer- 
ing his peculiar remedies," said the latter. 

Poor Somerard, hardly recovered from 
his accident of the evening before, was 
to-day put on a regimen of mere absti- 
nence. The influence of poplar -sap 
being far too drastic, he was restricted 
entirely to perfumes, and under their 
control we found him. Planted near the 
window, and standing up with much 
spirit to a garden-flower which by his 
side appeared a giant, he inhaled the 
fresh odor with all the ardor of a war- 
horse that breathes the smoke of battle ; 
and Sawney, at his back, was cautioning 
and restraining him, murmuring scien- 
tific formulas whose vile Latin came im- 
perfectly to our ears, and perhaps point- 
ing to his own red nose as a warning 



against the reckless stimulation of the 
smelling organ. The litany took some 
ten minutes ; at the close of which our 
homceopathist, dropping a grain of sugar 
out of a tube, administered the same to 




CHARLATANRY. 



his patient in water, and his surgical op- 
eration was for the present ended; the 
poor patient's back, to the ordinary eye, 
having much the same profile as before. 

"What an invention !" said to Grand- 
stone one of his guests from Epernay, 
his voice protected by the clatter of the 
machinery. "This doctor causes his 
client to drink through the nose — that 
same nose through which he doubtless 
makes him pay." 

"Mysterious, though," said honest 
young Grandstone, doubtfully. "You'll 
find Somerard particularly light and airy 
this morning: 
it's the essen- 
tial oil he gets 
out of those 
g i 1 1 i f 1 o w e r s 
and things.' 

"There is a 
need in hu- 
manity," said 
Fortnoyt in 
his slightly 
rhetorical way, 
"to which the 

race of charlatans responds. They are 
the parasites of the upper classes, just 
as the fortune-tellers subsist on qui ser- 
vants. There are metropolitan quacks 




THE TRIPOD OF KNOWLEDGE. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



149 



and there are provincial quacks. In 
all the towns, and in the outskirts of 
great cities too, have we not encoun- 
tered the same Proteus in his various 
forms of tooth - puller, pain - killer or 
corn-doctor ? ' Heaven bless you, my 
fine fellow !' I think as the honest rogue 




REFRESHMENT. 



cuts his poor flourish with feathers, armor, 
music and fanfare : ' you are such a satire 
on the age that I would not part with 
you. We all have an aching tooth some- 
where in the corner of our jaws, and we 
all try to temporize, instead of submitting 
to the regular dentist and the excruciating 
pull. While you are amusing the vil- 
lagers, monsieur and madame are be- 
guiled just as well with some Mesmer or 
Cagliostro adapted to their rank in life.' " 

"And the scientific ranks, too !" add- 
ed I. "You must not think that learn- 
ing excludes credulity. Have I not seen, 
in my own rooms at Passy, grave mem- 
bers of the Institute, in their sacred 
coats embroidered all round with sil- 
ver olives, bending their old backs 
over my card-tables or endeavoring 
to float up to the ceiling like Mr. 
Home ? But let us leave quackery, 
and this frightful mill too, where the 
tables turn from causes more purely 
rational. It will be delightful to fol- 
low that hemlock-tinted brook, which 
looks like mead or metheglin spilled 
from the drinking-horns of Valhalla." 

"The gentleman is fond of the 
Northern mythologies," said the Ger- 
man orpheonist, who entered now — 
the same who had sat up all night with 
his beer and kirsch in the hotel of the 
Stag. "I have found something better 



than the milk or honey-mead of Val- 
halla. I encountered, in a cow -yard, 
the very woman whom we met braiding 
straw ; and I have bought from her all 
this potful of first-rate kirsch wasser." 

The good pair of millers would accept 
nothing for our beds or breakfast : they 
were offended at the bare hint. But 
when we passed the kirschwasser round 
to them in a friendly way, they drank it 
almost all between them. 

I had to take a gibe from Somerard as 
I left my clock dancing a./>as seul on the 
shelf above the quadrille of seven or 
eight mattresses upon the floor, for the 
whole frame of the mill was shaken with 
the revolving wheel. I had no repartee 
ready for the sarcastic dwarf; and indeed 
my feeling for him was one of pity when 
I saw the look of trust and veneration 
with which he started off on the arm of 
Doctor MacMurtagh. I could but think 
of the proverb of the casuist Schupp, as 
reported by Heinrich Heine : " In this 
world there are more fools than persons." 

My curiosity about Fortnoye being by 
no means satisfied, I sought occasion to 
enjoy his society as we walked, but he 
was the most popular member of the 
group, the pivotal member about whom 
the rest revolved in various combinations. 
He was never alone. I attached myself 
to him, however, and conversed indiffer- 
ently amongst the rest while my arm was 
linked to his. Presently my chance came. 
The doctor, attracted by an echo, paused 




TEACHING THE ECHO. 



to hold a dialogue, it being, as he re- 
marked, the only individual in the coun- 
try that could speak a word of canny 



i5° 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



Scotch : the rest, except Fortnoye, were 
willing to stop and hear the extraordinary 
duet. I carried off my man while the 
doctor was executing the song "Green 
grow the Rushes " for the echo's benefit, 
and our orpheonist, who could not catch 
the tune, and could make nothing of the 
words, added to the confusion by assist- 
ing in the chorus. 

I made haste to report to Fortnoye the 
strange things I had heard about him 
from my fellow-lodgers at Carlsruhe — 




THE LURLEIS OF BADEN-BADEN. 

that he was at once a sage, a revolution- 
ist, a bankrupt, a tradesman and a poet. 

" There is a pennyworth of truth in all 
that," he answered, laughing. "But as 
we grow older we grc*v wiser. If you 
will but take me as I am to-day, I am 
no more a Communist than I am a bank- 
rupt. My existence has been rather idle 
and aimless until lately, and I confess 
that there are adventures to be told of 
my after-college days that I do not like 
to remember. I will tell you a trifling 
incident. Some few years ago I was at 
Baden-Baden, sulky, homeless and alone. 
What does the traditional young man do 
at Baden-Baden when he is friendless 
and far from home ?" 

"He yields to the seductions of the 
games. The sirens of gambling allure 
him as they rise from the green expanse ; 
and then the Lurleis sink with him and 
crunch his bones at their leisure under 
the — under the table." 

" You are very right. One rainy even- 
ing I entered the rooms where, beneath 
a blaze of light, were assembled the 
roues of the Continent, the blacklegs of 




THE DOUBLE ZERO. 

England, the miners of Australia and 
the curious beauties of New York — " 
"Of course it was your first visit?" 
"No: that would be the proper way 
ot Deginning a story, but in fact it was 
not my first visit. I had risked fifty 
francs every Saturday for some months 
out of pure ennui, and had lost and won, 
with, of course, a slight tendency toward 
sacrifice on the average. I considered 
that I was paying very cheap for an 
extraordinarily interesting drama, and 
thought it would not be honorable to 
frequent the rooms unless I lost at least 
as much as I usually did. I laid down 
that night my fifty francs carelessly upon 
the 0, the double zero — the dangerous 
and fascinating spot affected by so many 




GOING FORAGING. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



151 



players. The indicator went spinning 
round — in ' its predestined circle rolled,' 
as your Shellev has it. I lost, and the 




THE CROUPIER S FOREFINGER. 



croupier curled his forefinger around my 
little pile and tucked it in as the elephant 
absorbs the unregarded apple of the 
wondering little boy. Nothing could be 
quicker and cleaner. ' Take the whole 
of me, then,' I said in a pet, and threw 
down five hundred francs upon the same 
cynical double zero." 

"Without doubt," I observed, " vou 



lost again, and were left without a hope 
in the world." 

"Not at all, not at all! It was cer- 
tainly all I had, but my 
quarter's allowance was com- 
ing in on the Monday, or 
you see I should not have 
run the risk. I never found 
any use in losing my head on 
these occasions. And then 
I won." 

"You won !" 

"Won, yes — a whole pock- 
etful. And that was what 
frightened me. I was really 
afraid I should be bitten with 
the playing-fever. At home that night 
I wrote a short memorandum in my 
pocket - book : ' N. B. Never ga?nble 
again.' Of course, I only had to be re- 
minded of it. I dedicated the sum, ev- 
en- centime, to the next worthy charity 
that should present : I was not long in 
finding such a one, and, as it happened, 
that money, by an odd providence, went 




SIGN-LANGUAGE. 



to build a little monument in a cemetery 
— the cemetery of Laaken, in fact." 



I did not reveal that I knew anything 
of the storv. The babe, the wretched 



152 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



mother, the generous young stranger 
whose blushes I had had painted for me, 
whose sobbing words had been quoted 
in my hearing, the days of his tender 
watching by that poor child's last mar- 
ble cradle, formed a memory too beauti- 
ful and delicate to be exposed. I grasped 
his hand, warmly enough, no 
doubt, and only said, "I've 
been told, too, that you are 
no stranger to Francine — " 

"I should hope not!" 

"And that you advanced 
the funds to start her in 
business." 

"A bit, certainly — at six 
per centum. Besides, that 
little affair created a new 
centre of employment for 
my wines, and I had guaran- 
tees for my capital from old 
Father Joliet. Since those 
good fellows of your table 
choose to see in me a wild- 
cat speculator, was not this 
a reasonably good specula- 
tion ?" 

I was enchanted, for the 
easy commercial tone in 
which he spoke convinced 
me that he had never borne 
any relation toward Francine 
but that of her wine-agent. 

However contented Mac- 
Murtagh might be with the 
lessons in Burns he was giv- 
ing to the echo, the convic- 
tion became more and more 
deeply impressed on us that 
our lingual relation with the 
Black Foresters was not sat- lBw " ,,,T 
isfactory. The orpheonist, 
whose nativity was in the Swiss direc- 
tion, could understand about a word in 
forty of those which were addressed to 
us : I myself, with perhaps a broader 
education, a better knowledge of roots 
and a more philosophical way of listen- 
ing, could usually pick up a word in 
twenty-five. We walked along the road 
with less and less assurance, until, at the 
sight of a man dressed in black, whose 
passage brought up all the little children 
to his knees and all the women to the 



gate-posts or door-sills, Fortnoye quietly 
left us. 

As I drew near I found he was talk- 
ing to the priest in Latin. I contributed 
my own tributary stream of erudition, 
and we held a biblic colloquy in a lan- 
guage strangely varied with the French 




ENTRANCE TO THE HOLLEN PASS. 

accent, the German accent and the un- 
reasonable accent that used to be taught 
at Harvard. From this extraordinary 
diet the best results came out. 

We had been marching quite away 
from the direction of Strasburg : we were 
at the village of Wurzbach, between the 
Lentz Valley and the Negold Valley. 
To our right was shown the little town 
of Calw, situated at the extremity of the 
Black Forest, on its Westphalian side : 
on our left, at a two hours' march, was 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



J 53 



Wildbad, the famous watering - place, 
from whence we could easily reach a 
railway-station. These items consider- 
ably encouraged the chiefs of the army 
and revived the spirits of the men. In 
truth, the whole troop was getting tired 




FREIBURG IN BRISGAU. 



of the Rasselas valley, which seemed to 
have no bound nor limit. 

At half an hour from Wurzbach the 
fog that had accompanied us all the 
way from the mill condensed into posi- 
tive rain. We hastened our steps, look- 
ing meanwhile to right and left for shel- 
ter. A large cowherd's hut, distinguished 
by a wooden cross and surrounded by 
whole hillsides of cattle, offered itself to 
our regards. 

This time the hospitality we received 
was not effusive or voluntary. An old 



man and his daughter, the only guard- 
ians of the place, watched us taking 
possession with an expression of alarm. 
In fact, the rain increasing, the cows 
began to enter, and the strangers were 
eight in number : it was a large party 
for so small a place. We 
=- -_ _ were obliged, however, 

iijj^ to await the passage of 
"]% the shower : the storm re- 
FjS ^gjjp ; ^ doubled, and the interior 
JH was a mass of steam. It 
vffE J?- was noon. We were all 
: — hungry, and not a sign 
from our hosts announced 
a dinner. We were all 
ranged, damp and clam- 
my, like frogs on a skewer, 
along a miserable shelf or 
bench opposite the empty 
fireplace. The old man 
and the girl looked in their 
laps. 

Tired of this, Fortnoye 
got up and rang upon the 
table a broad ecu of Bra- 
bant, ordering the girl, with 
a quiet and becoming air 
of authority, to kindle a 
fire and serve some food. 
His gestures and his fine 
manly tones were expres- 
sive enough : the damsel, 
looking to her father for 
permission, and receiving 
a nod, filled the oven with 
wood and quickly sent a 
volume of smoke rolling 
up the chimney. Fortnoye 
was not yet at the end of 
his resources. He had per- 
ceived a rabbit skin amongst the rafters, 
and, taking it down, he signified, with 
the assistance of another resonant ecu, 
that we would take rabbit for our lunch- 
eon. The old man, when he compre- 
hended this idea, nodded his head, put 
the two broad pieces slowly into his 
pocket, buttoned on leather gaiters and 
a thick felt overcoat, and doggedly van- 
ished into the storm. He was gone an 
hour, but he did produce a pair of rab- 
bits. Meanwhile, the idea of remaining 
for perhaps a day in a hovel without a 



54 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



larder, and where our Latin was not of 
the slightest advantage for social inter- 
course, became so intensely vexatious 
that we resorted to various expedients 
for shedding the light of intelligence on 
the mind of our young female compan- 
ion. We named her Gretchen. 

A kind of comical delirium seized on 
Somerard. As he desired eggs for 
dinner, he took to crouching on the 
ground and crowing like the morning 
cock in Hamlet. Gretchen regarded 
him with stupefaction. Grandstone 
upon this, feeling an inclination for 
mutton-chops, began bleating like a 
lamb. His Epernay friends had un- 
equal tastes : one took to fishing with 
an imaginary line, the other to draw- 
ing an invisible ox by a rope, and to 
lowing expressively. I, for my part, 
thought with infinite regret of my 
faultless cook at Marly. The efforts 
of all our pantomimists were fruitless, 
and we starved on until the return of 
the old proprietor, except when one of 
us, imitating Alfred in another neatherd's 
hut, took to toasting brown bread at the 
cinders — an operation which he contin- 
ued with patience and great effect — until 
our friend returned successfully with the 
rabbits, even as Alfred's henchman with 
news of the Danish defeat. 

Our rude dinner finished, we lost no 
time in leaving this primitive hotel. The 
rain had abated, and soon ceased entire- 
ly. Before entering Wildbad we judged 
it necessary to enter a large gasthaus, in 
the form of a chalet, placed upon the 
right of the road, in order that the brush- 
ing, cleansing and pipe-claying proper 
to an entrance in form upon the Baths 
might take place. We had hardly gone 
in when one of the most familiar choruses 
of the Allerheiligen concert smote our 
ears : it came from the throats of a dozen 



orpheonists, who, after visiting the ruins 
and cascades, had plunged like ourselves 
into the Schwarzwald, and had described 
a very different circle through its recesses 
from ours. They had traversed the ro- 
mantic Hell-vale, the Hollenpass ; they 
had basked in the beautiful Paradise, or 
Himmelreich; they had touched long 
enough at Freiburg in the Breisgau to 
admire its fine cathedral, one of the few 




THE MOTIVE. 



completed edifices of its class in Europe ; 
and here they met us on the outskirts of 
Wildbad. Our own orpheonist, who I 
believe was a law-clerk from Geneva, 
fraternized at once with these artists, and 
I saw him no more at the waters. Fort- 
noye determined to do a little stroke of 
business among the hotel-keepers of this 
favorite resort. Grandstone, after cluck- 
ing together his brood of invited guests, 
busied himself with plans for their en- 
tertainment at the baths. I was the only 
one who wished to depart instantaneous- 
ly. My motive for such intense haste, 
need I explain it to the reader ? 

We, who had been such great friends, 
dissolved like a summer shower. All 
were busy and preoccupied : Fortnoye 
was the only one who grasped my hand 
at the station. 




ZP^_IR,T 2CI. 



THE NECKAR REVISITED: OLD FRIENDS AT 
HEIDELBERG AGAIN. 




ROBERT BEVERLEY, in his His- 
tory of Virginia, published in 1705, 
says that " at the mouths of their rivers, 
and all along upon the sea and bay, 
grows the Myrtle, bearing a berry, of 
which they make a hard brittle wax, 
which upon refining grows transparent." 
He goes on to speak of the uncontam- 
inable sweetness of this bay or myrtle — a 
sweetness so obdurate that candles made 
of the wax go out with a fume that is a 
perfume : they die in an odor of frag- 
rance, these tapers, like little saints ; so 
that people blow them out for the pleas- 
ure of smelling the snuff. 

The modest Vaccinium myrtillus, an 



unpretending member of the great fam- 
ily of the bays, grows abundantly in the 
shade of the trees and up the sides of 
the hills in the Black Forest and along 
the Rhine. Its berries are exported into 
France, sometimes to the figure of forty 
thousand hogsheads in a season ; but 
that must be in a year when the vintage 
is bad, for the innocent Vaccinium myr- 
tillus (or airelle-myrtille) changes in the 
hands of the cunning Frenchmen into 
grapes : those versatile chemists have 
found a philosopher's stone by which 
they can ferment a capital wine out of 
the myrtle. The plant which can render 
such service to humanity, which can 

155 



i56 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



make glad the heart of man with its 
wine or cheer his nights with its light, 
deserves an illustrious recompense ; and 
the myrtle has given its name to one of 
the grandest towns of the old Palatinate, 




THE MEETING. 

the university city of Heidelberg. The 
word Heidelberg signifies "Myrtle Moun- 
tain." 

I wish I were writing these lines by 
the scented rays of a candle made out 
of the American myrtle. I wish this 
romer by my side were filled with bland 
bay wine. For I am in Heidelberg ! I 
am at a little card-table in a beautiful 
bed-room, where the snowy sheets — the 
first I have seen for several days — ex- 
tend an almost irresistible invitation to a 
tramper so tired as I. Yes, I am writing 
in Heidelberg ! I wonder what the May 
moon is whispering to the old tower that 
lies prone on the mountain yonder, over- 
thrown and calm — an Endymion in 
slumber, with ivy bound around its fore- 
head. I should like to ask some poet : 
I should like to ask Hohenfels, with 
whom I have discussed rhyme and rea- 
son by the month together here in Hei- 
delberg. I could ask him, and find out 
exactly what he thinks about the moon, 
for a parallel ray streams into the next 
room, where Hohenfels is sitting in the 
fauteuil, dozing probably. But I will go 
to bed. I will lay down my pen and try 
my pillows — I have seen none since 
those of Achern, on which the landlord's 
daughters had strewed tobacco instead 
of poppies. I will blow out my fat, 
gelatinous candle, whose snuff is by no 
means perfumed with myrtle. I would 



like to read myself to sleep with a vol- 
ume of Goethe, my faithful Charles be- 
ing hard by to carry away the light when 
I dropped off, as was his style of old. I 
could summon Charles easily enough, for 
he is in the ante-chamber adjacent to my 
bed-room, snoring on a cot bed. 

But what is all this ? Heidelberg ! And 
Hohenfels with me at Heidelberg, as if 
it were young Paul Flemming again who 
talked, and the baron were by, with thirty 
years' silver taken out of his long hair, 
to criticise and listen ! And Charles 
himself present, the faithful retainer, as 
-though the snug summer box at Marly, 
with all its comforts, had been wafted 
away to the shores' of the Neckar ! Hei- 
delberg, and the baron, and the devoted 
Charles ! It must be a witchery of the 
May moon. Let the pen fall, and let 
the morning correct what the night has 
dreamed. 

Yet morning has come, and I am still 
at Heidelberg, but half in a dream. Let 
me recall how I have fared since I part- 
ed with Fortnoye and the £pernay rev- 
elers and started Parisward from Wild- 
bad. 

At the junction of Oos, as I emerged 
from the railway-car with the impression 
that I must take another carriage to get 




THE FEMALE CRUSOE AND PETS. 

upon the French line, a heated man 
stepped out of the terminus as I entered 
it. The heated man was Charles, my 
faithful Charles ! 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



157 



I hardly recognized him at first, I so 
little expected to meet him in the duchy 
of Baden. As he saw me his feelings 
expressed themselves in a complete in- 
ability to speak, and in a perspiration 
that set a tiara of pearls across his fore- 
head : when he grasped my hand some- 
thing fell splashing upon my boot, and 
I made no doubt but it was a tear. 

For thirty-six hours, Charles, borrow- 
ing the wings of steam and the reflector- 
lantern of the locomotive, had been 



searching for me minutel) , as Diogenes 
searched for a man or Telemachus for a 
father. A letter received by Hohenfels 
at Marly from some gentleman unknown 
to Charles had given the former some 
account of my escapades. According to 
this epistle, I had just left Baden-Baden, 
seemingly without cash, and to all ap- 
pearance owing board-money at Carls- 
ruhe, and probably at other places. The 
baron, inexpressibly shocked to recog- 
nize such a vagabond in a friend of his, 




THE DEAD CASTLE. 



waited a few days for my appearance ; 
then, unable to bear it, flew to my relief. 
Charles begged to go along with him. 
Josephine the cook was to write to them 
instantly if I arrived, and was left with 
narrow instructions to look well into the 
face's of all ragged persons who came 
begging at the gate, and turn no one 
away who could possibly be her master 
in a state of adversity. If I did not 
come, she was to write all the same and 
send a line of news every day. 

Two of these epistles had reached 



Charles without any tidings of Monsieur. 
Hohenfels had become very morose at 
Baden-Baden, and went about muttering 
anathemas against young heads covered 
with gray hair. His correspondent, 
whom he met there, and who was of 
course Sylvester Berkley, was equally 
nonplused. He could not understand 
how I had obtained the sinews of war 
for any further campaigns, and was 
much surprised that I had not returned 
direct to Marly, since he had bidden me 
farewell at the station, with my baggage 



i58 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



on my person in the shape of a batter- 
ed tin box. I must then, he opined to 
Hohenfels, have gone back to Carlsruhe, 
where I seemed to have unlimited credit 
with a certain Francine. He took the 
trouble to accompany the baron thither, 
his curiosity undoubtedly piqued in the 
matter of Francine as well as of me. In 
fact, the two gentlemen had left this 
morning, and were doubtless now in 
Carlsruhe. Their instructions to Charles 



were to post himself at the Oos junction, 
and watch at all the trains with the eye of 
a hawk and the ear of a lynx for any faded 
gentleman who should bear my stature, 
and who would probably be heard ask- 
ing for a temporary loan to enable him 
to reach Paris. His story told, Charles 
looked me over, and his old protecting 
tone took an accent of pity as he said, 
"Monsieur must have suffered a great 
deal to be obliged to buy an old hat like 




RNING OF HEIDELBEK& PALACE. 



that." It was my new hat, which indeed 
had had its own little history. 

"We will go to rejoin them together," 
said 1. " I have a debt at Carlsruhe 
which I am glad enough to settle." 

"Monsieur has run in debt?" There 
was a flood of reproach in the tone, and 
Charles, who is of my own age, yet likes 
to treat me as a schoolboy, made me 
feel as I did when I was at Cambridge 
and used to confess my debts in the va- 
cations. At seven in the evening we 
reached Carlsruhe. 

In search of Berkley, I approached 
the official bureaux once more, at about 
the same hour as before, and with the 



same question. The identical porter,, 
like an automaton, gave me the identical 
reply of the previous occasion : " Mr. 
Berkley has gone to Heidelberg, where 
he is dieting on whey." I asked if he 
had not been in Carlsruhe to-day, return- 
ing from Baden. The answer was affirm- 
ative, without explanations. "If he has 
gone to Heidelberg, is there not another 
gentleman with him?" There was a 
new affirmative response, and the watch- 
man went so far as to add, " I believe 
the gentlemen have gone there to hunt 
for something they have lost." 

That something was I. Satisfied with 
my news, I ran around parenthetically. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



59 



to the house where I had been so com- 
fortably lodged. In the pretty dining- 
room everything was confusion. The 
dinner - table, all entire, giving up its 
old researches in Progressive and Com- 
parative Geography, was talking of the 
grand event. Francine had gone, Fran- 
cine had been taken away — by an old 
gentleman, a servant added. I came 
just in time to attract every one's suspi- 
cions to myself. "What were you plot- 
ting together in the office yonder?" ask- 
ed the man of Wyoming, pointing to the 
cabinet, where the keys still hung up like 
interrogation-points in a manuscript. 

This gave me great concern, but I had 
leisure to think of nothing for the mo- 
ment but to place myself as quickly as 
possible in the care of my keepers. 
Pigeon-holing Francine in my brain, to 
be thought about when I should have 
leisure, I hastened with Charles to the 
railway. The train which had just 
brought us was ready for departure. 
Carlsruhe is a dining-station, and while 
I was at the table of Francine our fel- 
low-passengers were mingling soup and 
coffee in the brief agony of a railway 
meal. 

Charles, sitting with me in a first-class 
carriage for the first time in his life, in- 
dicated his sense of the proprieties by 
maintaining perfect silence, and placing 
himself at the greatest attainable dis- 
tance in the diagonal corner from my 
own. Under any other circumstances he 
would have been full of talk. I fell into 
a train of musing that agreed well enough 
with his taciturnity. I considered how I 
had abjured the Rhine, and was now 
skirting its mountain-walled borders. I 
thought of the insane concatenation that 
was flinging me upon Hohenfels once 
more, and at Heidelberg ! A score and 
a half of years expanded their cloudy 
wings around me, and a lymphatic 
beauty smiled vaguely upon me in the 
general situation. The baron and I, 
though assuredly we never expected to 
see Heidelberg together again, might 
discuss Richter and Schiller behind that 
many-windowed mask of a ruined facade, 
and our criticisms would become juve- 
nile again and unconventional, like those 




RUINS AND CABBAGE. 



of the Bronte children when their father 
made them utter opinions from behind 
a mask on the great men of England. 
But the baron ! I 
paused doubtfully. 
My very servant 
had been scolding 
me: what ava- 
lanches of reproach 
had I not a right 
to expect from Ho- 
henfels ! 

We reached Hei- 
delberg in the dark, 
and I made for the 
hotel of Prince 
Charles, where I 
knew that Berkley 
usually took his 
whey. I trembled 
with apprehension. 
I was about to meet 

the man whom I had urged to pass the 
spring with me in my little country den 
at Marly. I had written him two let- 
ters : the first was from Carlsruhe, where- 
in I bade him await me. He had obey- 
ed, but his waiting had been vain. The 
second letter, from the saw-mill in the 
Black Forest, was in my pocket. 

Charles quickly discovered for me the 
little suite of rooms in which Sylvester 
and the baron were installed. I ordered 
him, with a dignity unusual with me, to 
go in first : I was shaking in all my 
joints. The door opened, and in an in- 
stant Hohenfels 
was hugging me 
like a lunatic in his 
long arms. 

"Ah, you terrible 
responsibility ! 
Have I got you 
safe?" he said. I 
felt his heart 
thumping against 
my own ribs. 

Berkley left the 
chess-board at 
which the two gen- 
tlemen had been 

sitting over their game, and came up to 
me slowly, with graceful gestures of his 
knees at every step, and brushing out 




A MOCKING 



i6o 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



his whiskers a little as he advanced. It 
was his manner when he had something 
elaborately sarcastic to deliver. But he 
remarked, "What a singular man you 
are, Mr. Flemming ! and what a singular 




DRUNK WITH REVENGE. 



man you have made of me ! At the be- 
ginning of the month I took leave and 
came down to Heidelberg: you forced 
me to break off my cure of whey, to go 
and take it up again at Baden-Baden. 
Now you have got me back here, are 
you content with me ?" 

I wrung his hand : in my confusion it 
was the broadest acknowledgment I 
could make. 

I tried to say something to Hohenfels : 
" There is a good moon on the ruins, old 
pal. I'd like to go up and sit there a 
while with you." 

"You rheumatic infant!" said the 
baron, but he was touched too. "You 
must go to bed. The next chamber is 
engaged for you, you see. It is rather 
more comfortable than this : I have set 



the keys so that I can lock you up from 
the outside, and I am going to fasten 
you in, You are capable of running off 
from us again." 
I slept as on swan's-down, and awaken- 
ed to find myself in 
the shadow of the 
Myrtle Mountain, with 
Charles unrolling a 
napkin to wait on me 
in the breakfast-room, 
and my name on the 
inn-register next to the 
names of my oldest 
friends. ' 

Sylvester awaited us 
in the adjoining room, 
where a little private 
table was laid. Charles 
relieved my wants with 
importunate compas- 
sion and waited on the 
others with much 
friendly interest. 

Although I have 
long recorded my lik- 
ing for public dinner- 
tables, where so many 
gentle things can be 
said without being 
overheard, yet I ap- 
proved this time the 
confidential form of 
the meal. We had so 
much to say to each 
other ! The private table, however, 
proved to be an arrangement of Berk- 
ley's. He did not choose to drink his 
whey along with the holiday clerk and 
the commercial gent. 

The event of the repast was a letter 
from Josephine. It said, in so many 
words (addressed to Hohenfels), that 
Monsieur being certainly lost, she was 
going to look out for another situation ; 
the solitude was unbearable ; she was 
tired of acting as cook in the service of 
Argus and the two tabbies. I read the 
assurance of my loss in a loud voice to 
the others. For some reason or other, 
it gave me a fit of home-sickness. From 
the post-mark of Marly emanated a pow- 
erful influence over my spirits. I was 
conscious of an overwhelming desire to 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



16] 




see my garden, with its pumpkin vines 
and Lima beans, its little rows of sweet 
Indian corn, and the other contrivances 
with which, in opposition to Laboulaye, 
I had created an Amerique en Paris. I 
wanted to fondle my dog, and I wanted 
to baste my cook. Of these desires I 
made a confidant 
of H o h e n f e 1 s , 
proposing to him 
to fall into re- 
treating order 
forthwith. 

"Only last 
night you wanted 
to revisit the cas- 
tle. You need 
not bring me so 
far to drive me 
straight back 
again. As for 
your cook, con- 
sole yourself: I 
gave her news of 
your health in a 
letter mailed last 
night." 

The baron, 
with his shackling, ungainly limbs, his 
enormous silken tassel of hair, has not 
improved in looks with age. A pair of 
deep crescent-shaped furrows have par- 
tially replaced his old smile, and his 
forehead is ruled like a country school- 
master's copy-book for the inscriptions 
of Time. But the soft iris of his light- 
blue eye the years have not been able to 
wrinkle ; and out of that mild azure, of a 
color eternally young, he gave me a look 
of exceeding friendliness as he cheered 
me up : it was not for my cook he con- 
soled me. 

" I am willing enough to see the ruins," 
I said, ashamed. " I only fear, if we go 
over the old spots again, that we shall 
take root here." 

We beguiled Berkley by promising to 
drop him at the Molkenkur, his dairy of 
whey and buttermilk. It was in a grange 
so named, on the top of a hill, that Syl- 
vester undertook to acquire the diplo- 
matist's calmness by infusion and imbi- 
bition. From the plateau we lowered 
our eyes, and out of the midst of the 



lower part of the mountain, between 
Wolfsbrunnen and the Molkenkur, a 
magical apparition surged up before our 
sight in the dazzling morning sunshine. 

A city of marble rests there as though 
it eternally heard the trump of a material 
resurrection. Columns and arches rise 



THE GREAT TUN OF HEIDELBERG 



out of earthy graves. Men of stone, its 
only inhabitants — some of whom hold 
swords in their hands, while others are 
supine and vanquished in dusty moats — 
seem to keep up eternally some terrific 
battle. Immense piles of ruin deform 
the earth. Palaces rise around in maj- 
esty and seeming strength, but through 
their huge windows you see peeping the 
foliage of lusty trees. Ivies, like the 
snakes of Laocoon, roll up from the feet 
of the sturdy pillars, and bite again and 
again into the cracks and fissures of the 
stone. As Herculaneum lies fixed and 
mocked in its security of lava, so lie 
these buildings mocked with the cohesion 
of their own mortar and ironically ce- 
mented with their ruin. 

"Heidelberga deleta" said Berkley the 
statesman in a low voice, repeating the 
sinister brace of words furnished by 
Boileau to serve as inscription on the 
medal struck in honor of Louis XIV., 
the destroyer of Heidelberg. 

" Nay, I cannot think its life is com- 
pletely trampled out," said Hohenfels. 



162 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



"Some intelligence of its past purpose 
and splendor must remain, to give it a 
ghostly animation. Do you suppose 
these stones do not excite themselves, 
on quiet nights, by performing again the 
echoes of revel and pomp they knew of 
yore ? Do you believe yonder stairs, 
plying up in spirals to the clouds, do not 
lead anywhere, or are not pressed by 



phantom feet ? There is a voice in the 
Past, gentlemen, for him who can hear it : 

Prophetic sounds and loud arise for ever 
From this, and from all Ruin, to the wise !" 

For my part, I recited one of Goethe's 
little poems, that one composed by him 
when sailing down the Rhine in com- 
pany with Lavater and Basedow, and 
when, as we may fancy, he was suddenly 




THE HEKO. 



struck by the contrast between some 
gray tower on the cliffs above and the 
floating life beneath : 

He stands upon the turret high, 

The Hero's noble wraith, 
And to the skiff that passeth by, 

" Fair speed the voyage !" he saith. 

" Behold, these sinews were so strong, 
This heart so stout and wild, 
Such pith did to these bones belong, 
So high the board was piled. 

'• One naif my life I stormed away, 
One half in rest I drew — " 



At that word of "rest" I looked at Ho- 
henfels, and paused : he concluded the 
poem in his silver voice with a gentle- 
ness that turned its menace into a ben- 
ison, and looking kindly straight at me : 

" ' And thou, thou mortal of a day, 
Thy mortal path pursue !' " 

Sylvester then, as his contribution to the 
literature of Heidelberg, furnished one of 
his neat and succinct little histories, re- 
suming in a few words the past career of 
the stones that lay mute around us. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



1 63 



In the place now occupied by Heidel- 
berg Castle the Romans had already 
constructed a fortress of a square plan. 
After the fall of the Empire the design 
was respected, so far as the form went, 
by the Franks in the first 
place, and then by Conrad 
of Hohenstaufen, who began 
to give it the appearance of ^ 

a palace. Conrad's old .. ~ = 

mauer was reconstructed in : : ^%L. 
the close of the fourteenth 
and beginning of the fif- 
teenth centuries by Robert L 
and Robert II., who added 
numerous parts to the build- 
ing. The succeeding elec- 
tors rivaled each other in 
adding graces and beauties 
to the building. Frederick I., called the 
Victorious, and Louis the Peaceful, or- 
namented it with towers and terraces; 
Frederick IV. erected a superb construc- 
tion, whose remains prove its former 
grandeur; his son, Frederick V., king 
of Bohemia, built a second close by, 
calling it the English Palace, to recall 
the fact that his wife Elizabeth was 
daughter of James I. of England. In 
his unfortunate reign Heidelberg fell 
into the Bavarian hands, and its great 
Palatinate library was carried to Rome. 
Other palaces were added by successive 
princes, but the crowning glory was that 
marvel of architecture which was con- 
tributed by Otto Henry in the middle of 
the sixteenth century. The cluster of 
palaces had well earned its splendid 
name of the German Alhambra when, 
from 1674 to 1693, all the scourges of 
war fell upon the Palatinate. Of its 
palace there remained only that which 
the miner and sapper, the cannon and 
the torch, were unable to destroy. 

But Louis XIV. did not sufficiently 
destroy the palace of Heidelberg. Its 
majesty has grown by what he did, and 
Versailles does not offer half the solemn 
beauty of this its murdered rival. 

Sylvester continued his explanations 
as a resident and habitue. The castle 
in its present state has resident officers 
and guardians of both sexes. The Tow- 
er of Rupert, dating from the time of 



Louis the Debonnaire, is haunted by the 
devil, they say, since the doings in it 
of a certain Leonora of Liitzelstein ; but 
from this ill-omened edifice we heard 
the sounds of a piano : other habitable 




THE JESTER. 

portions are occupied by commonplace 
modern tenants. While Berkley was 
relating the history of Leonora, we ob- 
served a woman passing along an arch- 
ed gallery with a plate of sauerkraut — 
surely an honest and healthy sign of 
life ; another tower near by, half crum- 
bled away, showed windows with good 
tight modern sashes; and while the 
screech-owl and adder were making the 
most of the ruined portion, a canary in 
a cage mocked the devastation with sub- 
lime impudence, singing as he swung 
over Heidelberg from a Gothic balcony. 

We examined the buildings of the old 
castle in detail — the towers, rather, for 
in this ruin every separate portion is so 
called, and even the library is a tower. 
We inspected the terrace, with its fresh 
gardens in the pomp of spring-time, and 
we looked down on the roofs of the 
modern town. Wherever we went I 
fancied something was wanting. 

Suddenly I asked myself if something 
was not de trap ? 

My eye fell upon Berkley, who was 
demonstrating a Roman coin in the mu- 
seum with insufferable zeal and erudi- 
tion. I glanced at my dear Hohenfels, 
and fancied that his thoughts were the 
like of mine. This, in fact, was not our 
Heidelberg, the Heidelberg of our Lang 
Syne, the Heidelberg of our memories 
and of our passion. How could we pos- 
sibly fall into the old tone, how discuss 



1 64 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



Hans Sachs or the Minnelays, before this 
frigid perfection, this person with opin- 
ions all made up and squared by rule, 
this perennial Prize Scholar fed on whey ? 
We formed between ourselves a politi- 
cal party in opposition to Berkley. We 
spoke to each other with our eyes behind 
his back : we telegraphed over his shoul- 
ders or through his elbows. It is true 
that Sylvester bore 
the name of one 
of my best friends, 
a man who stood 
by me and cheer- 
ed me nobly in a 
period of ridicu- 
lous trial ; and the 
younger Berkley, 
for his own part, 
had overwhelmed 
me with civilities 
and obligations. 
I could not help 
it: the moment he 
presented himself, 
in complete armor 
of white kid gloves 
and insipid erudi- 
tion, at the scene 
of my old fond 
confidences with 
Hohenfels, he became an enemy. I 
would not have offended him for the 
world, yet he was a mortal offence to 
me. 

There was nothing for it but bravado. 
We must drain Berkley to the dregs. 
"I suppose we cannot escape from it," I 
said: "let us go and see the great tun. 
The guide-book will never forgive us if 
we don't." 

"Yes," said Hohenfels, "let us beard 
the lion of Heidelberg. Let us see the 
great tun." 

In this kind of desperation we paid 
homage to the coopers' marvel. We 
approached an angle formed by the pal- 
aces of Frederick IV. and Frederick V., 
and descended into the electoral cellars. 
I am not sure that in all our residence 
at Heidelberg, Hohenfels or I had ever 
visited the tun ; but as a piece of acted 
derision to Berkley we both enthusiastic- 
ally agreed to see the corpulent wonder. 




GUAKDIAN OF THE CELLAR. 



In place of one astonishment, we had 
three. 

Compared with the wine-tun of com- 
merce, the smallest of the three tuns at 
Heidelberg is a giant, but by the side 
of the other two, it seems like a little 
anchovy-keg or mackerel-tub. The true 
monarch, the master-tun of Heidelberg, 
reposes in grand honor amongst the tra- 
ditions of the German people. The 
vine-growers of the Palatinate, to fulfill 
their title, were obliged to fill it every 
year ; but it had to submit to the fate of 
the castle : the castle was burnt up, the 
tun was drowned out. The revenge of 
all the enemies of Germany, the revenge 
of the French, the Bavarians, the Im- 
perialists, Barbarossa, Turenne and Me- 
lac, had to come by turns and slake its 
thirst at .this symbolical, this eucharistic 
wine-vessel. They broke the vase after 
having let flow the contents. His ene- 
mies' backs once seen in retreat, the 
noble elector would cause the tun to be 
reconstructed, and always in augmented 
proportions. The astonishment of the 
world was increased, but so was the tax 
of the vine-growers. The curious may 
see accordingly, to-day, the most enor- 
mous cask which it has yet entered into 
the mind of a cooper to construct : if 
his ambition should increase by but one 
degree, he would be no longer a cooper, 
but a shipbuilder. 

Indeed, the tun resembles nothing so 
much as a Dutch brig seated on the stocks. 
Reposing its majestic belly on a series of 
solid supports, it sits like an Ark of Jol- 
lity, its prow and poop, so to speak, both 
decorated with figure-heads and coats- 
of-arms, and a lusty Bacchus seeming to 
bestride the hoops in a bower of sculp- 
tured vines. A double stairway leads 
up on deck, where, in a lucky season, a 
ball has been given in honor of the vin- 
tage, and the elector has danced with the 
fairest women of his court. 

This mastodon of the cellarage, built 
in 175 1 by Engler, engineer-cooper, as 
he was proudly called, of the elector 
Charles Theodore, has been three times 
filled completely. If the crop were but 
middling, the good prince deigned to re- 
duce the levy to the contents of his mid- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



i6 5 



die tun ; if it failed entirely, he conde- 
scended to accept the fill of the smallest 
hogshead, called the Virgin's, which only- 
held thirty thousand bottles. 

In the same cellar, besides the three 
tuns, we saw the statue of Perkeo the 
jester, buried by desire with his mouth 
under the spigot of the largest cask. It 
is a kind of doll, or imitation, with a 
frame of wood, a coat of silk, with tow 
wig and short breeches, a wooden cane 
in the hand which is not an imitation. 

Clement Perkeo, the buffoon of Charles 
Theodore, in addition to the ordinary ha- 
bits of his kind, such as fishing off the 
general -in -chief's wig with hook and 
line, withdrawing the chair from the cor- 
pulent prime minister, and the like, had 
an enthusiastic addiction to wine. The 
finest building and eighth wonder of the 



world, he thought, was the tun, and he 
chose for his nearest friend Engler, the 
engineer - cooper. He brought in the 
most accurate news of the grape - har- 
vests. " Is the yield large, Perkeo ?" 
"Disgraceful: hardly the middle tun!" 
or, "Perfect ruin: only the Virgin this 
year !" By these symbols he announced 
to the elector the misfortunes of his 
peasantry, and to the greedy court- 
treasurer the prospects of his taxes. 
Lest the vicissitudes of the vineyards 
should affect his spirits (and the good 
spirits of a jester are his capital), he 
was allowanced with eighteen bottles 
of Markgrafter wine per day. His only 
wish on dying was to be buried with his 
lips under the grand faucet, doubtless 
hoping, even in death, to render the tun 
his tributary. The elector directed his 





THE SHUTTLECOCK. 



image to be prepared as guardian of the 
cellar: thus we see it, made of coopers' 
and caulkers' materials, wood and tow. 

At the conclusion of our visit to the 
ruins we were resting, my dearest friend 
and I, in the largest chamber of our suite 
at the Prince Charles hotel. Berkley 
was off for his whey, and I thought the 
moment had come at last for Ulrich von 
Lichtenstein and Walther von der Vogel- 
weide. But Hohenfels asked me for a 
full, methodical account of all my wan- 
derings. I next tried to induce him to 
speak of his new acquaintance, Mr. Berk- 
ley, having myself a determined habit 
of discussing the last thing that has got 
into my head, and being willing to make 
common cause with the baron in exe- 
crating the diplomatist. But Hohenfels, 
whatever language his eyes might have 
spoken in allusion to Berkley, would not 
speak in his absence with any expression 
but a guarded chivalry and courtesy, 



protesting that he knew the gentleman 
too slightly to estimate his character, 
and again asked me for the full confes- 
sion of my long error. 

That history, which I had recounted 
to customs-officers and cab-drivers, to 
Francine and to Fortnoye, and which 
had rolled up like a snowball even as I 
was singing the cantos of my own Odys- 
sey, I gave to Hohenfels in full : I did 
not omit the loss of an umbrella or the 
purchase of a hat. 

Hohenfels made his comment : "It 
seems to me that if your friend Berkley 
has made himself a living churn for di- 
gesting buttermilk and whey, you have 
done even more to lose your independ- 
ence as a man. You have lost your cen- 
tre of gravity. You have become a mere 
shuttlecock between Accident and Ca- 
price." 




ZF-AJE&T XII. 



CONFLICTS AT HEIDELBERG. 




THE TORTURES OF BERANGER. 



THAT prince in the Arabian tale who, 
on pulling aside his robe, revealed 
his lower half turned to black marble, 
was doubtless very happy when the en- 
chantment came to be canceled and the 
warm red current began to steal through 
his flesh of sculpture. So was I in re- 
covering the baron at Heidelberg. Ho- 
henfels again, and again Heidelberg! 
My thoughts began to knit, my stone 
age at Marly buried itself in flowers and 
became a forgotten loss, a dead period. 
I declared that, after all, a stay-at-home 
was a mere petrifaction, and that I only 
found life again when I found my legs. 

For me an effort was necessary in re- 
newing the old times - you cannot force 
the fine corpulent heart-throbs of fifty 
1 66 



into the genteel waistcoat of nineteen. 
But for the baron no such transvasation 
was necessary : he became young, or he 
remained young, and fell into perspect- 
ive with perfect ease. He was again my 
Hohenfels of the Carl Strasse, with the 
nature of a milky opal, always a little 
curdled and flawed. His long flaxen 
hair, flowing like the "curled clouds" on 
which an Ariel might ride, was hardly 
changed: Hohenfels' topknot, in fact, 
was of the colorless sort which eludes 
the approach of grayness, or conceals 
grayness when it comes; and I have 
often looked at the pale picture of his 
head, with its abundant fuzz and con- 
volutions, and thought it the perfect im- 
age of his brain. My friend's long spine, 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



16- 



his bent shoulders, his lank, aimless, 
companionable legs, which I loved with 
all my soul, were but the preserved fea- 
tures of his adolescence, and immortally 
beautiful for me. They gave him, to my 
notion, a lovable affinity with the por- 
traits of that fairy enchanter born to us 
out of the Dark Ages, that undying boy, 
that sole possessor in our busy time of 




' I S; ifim. 



IL TROVATORE. 



the gift of legend — poor Hans Andersen. 
The discord in our exquisite union, the 
alkaline drop in our cup, was of course 
Mr. Berkley. 

We essayed, however, to practice the 
old duet. We sought together those 
nooks and corners of the splendid ruin 
known, as we fancied, to us alone. We 
no longer regretted that the superb 
schloss was red, not gray. Youth de- 
mands for its poems the hue of ashes, 
but with the approach of age comes a 
love for any spot of color where the eye 
may warm itself. We sought our an- 
cient haunt, the summit of the Rent 
Tower, where the lindens wave like 
plumes from a cloven helmet, and where 
Paul Flemming used to admire the Tree 
of Life brought from America two hun- 



dred years before, and standing like a 
kingly Louisiana slave in its iron bonds 
and fetters. Of all this beautiful devas- 
tation, Hohenfels was the voluntary bard 
and interpreter. "Sull' orrida torre " he 
perched, the troubadour. His ear had 
not forgotten its nicety : he could play 
as well as ever, and still preserved the 
remarkable gift of singing and smoking 
both at once. 

The minstrel ought, perhaps, to have 
sung the War of the Palatinate ; or Louis 
XIV., who undertook it to reclaim the 
dowry of his sister-in-law, wife of Phi- 
lippe d'Orleans ; or Marshal Lorges, 
whose name is only remembered, like 
that of the aspiring boy who fired the 
Ephesian dome, because he laid in ashes 
the castle of Heidelberg. We ought, 
perhaps, I say, to have sung these flames 
of Troy. But we interpreted Heidelberg 
in another manner. Among these tufted 
walls, crumbling into melancholy beauty 
beneath the touches of Time and His- 
tory, nothing seemed to us half so pa- 
thetic as the ruin of ourselves. It was 
here we had met and sauntered, dream- 
ing young men, committed to lives of 
scholarship or art. It must be pardoned 
to us that what we looked at was the 
pageant of our own boyhood, lying in 
vision for us, bathed in sun, through any 
and all of these rugged arches. For this 
sort of sentiment there is just one perfect 
expression ; and we sang the "Grenier" 
of Beranger. We sang it through to its 
pensive close : 

Quittons ce toit, oil ma raison s'enivre : 
Oh, qu'ils sont loin, ces jours si regrettes ! 

J'echangerais ce qu'il me reste a vivre 

Contre un des jours qu'ici Dieu m'a comptes. 

At each of. the five repetitions of that 
refrain which closes Beranger's stanzas 
with a heavy sigh — at each turn of the 
"qu'on est bien a vingt ans !" — I fancied 
I heard a voice like a file. At the fifth 
refrain the sound was no longer doubt- 
ful : Berkley, whose existence we had 
forgotten, and on whom Nature had con- 
ferred the ability to tie a cravat, but not 
the gift of melody, was assisting behind 
us with the chorus. 

" I see you both adhere to the poet of 
the First Consul," he observed with his 



1 68 



THE NEW HYPERION 



most agreeable smile, " though his con- 
firmed Bonapartism makes him an un- 
welcome exponent of feeling just now in 
most circles, and though his vaunt in the 
penultimate verse, that 'jamais les rois 
n'envahiront la France,' sounds nothing 
less than derisory when sung to-day by 
the Rhine." 

"We were trying to capture another 
kind of kingdom," said Hohenfels. "You 
know, Berkley, that Tacitus describes 
the barbarians by the Rhine as not only 
lashing themselves to warlike deeds, but 
consoling their ills, with a song. We 
were only endeavoring to hit upon the 
old key, and with it, if you will allow me 
to say so, to enter the garret of Beranger." 

But our talk was off the hinge, and we 
could but converse on indifferent subjects 
until dusk. We both love that placid 
hour of afterglow, that equipoise of day 
and night, which our language, with one 
of its most poetical suggestions, calls the 
even-ing. Berkley's endeavor to throw 
a slight upon Beranger had had the nat- 
ural effect of fixing the minstrel firmly 
in our minds, and I supposed the baron 
and myself were equally possessed with 
a willful saturation of Beranger while we 
talked with Sylvester on politics or whey. 
At last, when a star shot, Hohenfels made 
a falling firework out of the sparks from 
his pipe, and hummed — 

Encore une etoile qui file, 
Qui file, file, et disparait ! 

Prompt as he began this couplet, a 
voice like Byron's "whetstone of the 
teeth, monotony in wire," began to "file, 
file" in unison, or rather in discord, with 
his own : it was Mr. Berkley, bent on 
being sympathetic, and contributing his 
mite to the entertainment. 

"I am reminded," the latter contin- 
ued, "of some rather interesting facts in 
the history of star-worship, of which a 
remnant is plainly found in the tradition 
that some one dies when a meteor falls. 
A long time before Zoroaster — " 

"Don't go on with that, Sylvester," 
said the baron easily: "we had rather 
talk Beranger. You know he says he 
was made a poet by a thunderstorm : 
that 3torm made a swan out of the tailor's 
goose." 



"All poets thrive on rain," I observed. 
" Burns was found by his biographer 
open-mouthed with enjoyment under a 
sort of waterspout, oblivious of the tor- 
rents that were filling out his galligas- 
kins." 

"Your pleasantry about the tailor's 
goose, baron," said Mr. Berkley, "re- 




THE DISCIPLE OF STRAUSS. 

minds me of the little poem ' Les Oies ' 
which Beranger's translator, Prout, puts 
on the same page with his version of 
' Shooting Stars.' Since you change 
your vein by means of a witticism, the 
satire of this little squib cannot be dis- 
agreeable. I will attempt a solo." And 
he chanted, with a measured smile : 

I hate to sing your hackneyed birds : 

So, doves and swans, a truce ! 
Your nests have been too often stirred ; 
My hero shall be, in a word, 

A goose ! 

Can roasted nightingale a liver 

Fit for a pie produce? — 
Fat pies that on the Rhine's sweet river 
Fair Strasburg bakes Pray, who's the giver ? 
A goose ! 

He interrupted himself to observe that as 
both his hearers had just passed through 
Strasburg, where they had doubtless paid 
the civic goose the compliment of at least 
one indigestion, the poem would be ap- 
preciated. We looked at each other, 
and hoped to get quit of the music by 
the acceptance of this impeachment. 
But in an instant another verse of the 
canticle was fluttering laboriously through 
Berklev's nostrils : 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



169 



An ortolan is good to eat, 

A partridge is of use, 
But thev are scarce; whereas you meet 
At Paris, ay, in every street, 

A goose ' 

There were six or seven verses, and 
he faithfully gave us them all, remark- 
ing occasionally that he had hardly ever 
sung before any one, and that his goose 
song was therefore a very callow gos- 
ling. Berkley scientific was supportable, 
but Berkley humorous was more than we 
could bear. We abruptly rose and went 
down the mountain into the city. Dur- 



ing the descent I contrived to say inter- 
rogatively to the baron, "Fine fellow, 
Sylvester." 

" Oh, a heart of gold !" 

" And yet I got along with him admira- 
bly at Baden-Baden !" 

"And yet I passed a capital time with 
him here until you came." 

What did this and yet mean if Berkley 
was a fine fellow and a heart of gold ? 
The fact is, like old friends as we were, 
we abused the laws of rhetoric in our 
talk and leaped to conclusions. We 




THE GOSLINGS OF MELODY. 



meant that Berkley was good, and even 
companionable in a strait, but no com- 
rade for such a friendship and duality as 
ours. We both esteemed him, yet both 
would pay anything for an hour of free- 
dom. 

The baron thereupon had a bright 
idea: "Suggest to him to unstarch him- 
self: invite him to a studenten-kneipe." 

The stratagem was successful. The 
dissipations and, still worse, the philos- 
ophy, of a students' gathering were dis- 
tasteful to our mediator between na- 
tions, who had knelt at the old crucifix 
of Baden-Baden. "My view may be a 
biased one," he said, "but it seems to 
me that, representing a country with a 
state religion, my place can hardly be 
among these disciples of Spinoza and 
Strauss." 

So we went bird's-nesting like a pair 
nf schoolboys, free and glad. We knew 



well the old lane where the tavern was, 
and entering by a garden we had a view 
into the hall without interruption, mor- 
ally speaking : in reality, we could see 
nothing at the window where we had 
stationed ourselves, for the tobacco- 
smoke. The nearest head alone was 
recognizable, and to my surprise proved 
to be that of an acquaintance. It ap- 
pertained to the hand that had thrown a 
shower of gold among the feasters of 
Allerheiligen — to my friend the student 
of pharmacy, as he had called himself, 
who tried to send me botanizing for 
chickweed. He sat in a circle of atten- 
tive listeners, who seemed to pay him a 
good deal of consideration, and it was 
easy to see that he was a bit of a hero 
among the students. Presently he turn- 
ed his face from profile to full, and then 
it was the baron's turn to be surprised. 
"Why, it is Fritz!" he exclaimed — 



i 7 o 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



"the son, Flemming, of a man whom I 
have known like a brother, the Lithua- 
nian baron Von Ramm !" And he tap- 
ped at the window. 

A fat young man turned rather angrily 
and tottered slowly up to our casement. 
He raised the guillotine sash, stared at 
us blankly a moment, said "Death to 
the Philisters !" and let the glass fall 
with a noise. Then he retired into the 
cloud. Hohenfels tapped again, and 
this time it was the pharmacy-student 
who looked around : my comrade had 
taken out his card and held it against 
one of the small panes, where it was 
framed like a picture. The student 
quickly recognized the name, and we 
made an entry of considerable distinc- 
tion, being drawn by the collars through 
the window itself into the den. 

It was a page of my youth brought 
bodily before my eyes again : it seemed 
not a renewed crowd of callow students, 
but the same students, eternally young 
and kept from change by some enchant- 
ment. There were the Mossy-heads, the 
Old Ones, the Pomatum Stallions, the 
Princes of Twilight. They were dis- 
cussing the laws of the Broad-Stone and 
the Gutter; they were screaming and 
whistling; some were in long yellow 
hair and braided coats, gorgeous and 
dirty ; some had white woolly heads, 
and wore the schlafrock. It was a great 
throng, for there were Austrians, Saxons, 
Bavarians, Hessians, Hamburgers and 
Wurtemburgers present. They looked 
much alike, and the national differences 
were seen not in their faces, but in the 
patterns of the colossal pipes they carried. 
The tallest men seemed to wear the nar- 
rowest coats, those long, closely-button- 
ed, serious-looking garments : out of all 
proportion with the long pipes and the 
great -coats were the caps — the imper- 
ceptible caps, which, whatever wind may 
blow, rest fixed like a nail on the ex- 
treme summit of the head, thanks to the 
practiced skill with which the German 
student manoeuvres his neck. On the 
table was a chair, on the chair was the 
dignitary known as Senior of a Lands- 
mannschaft, and on the Senior a great 
pair of boots. "Silentium!" cried this 



functionary: "the chorus will recom- 
mence." 

"I think a chorus is an odd sort of 
silentium," said Hohenfels; and the 
company began to sing a doggerel verse : 

O Hans was Kost der Huat ? 

Der Huat der hat ein Thaler Kost, 

Ein Thaler Kost. 

Ein Thaler Kost, 
Der Huat der hat ein Thaler Kost. 
Und vier and funfzig Groot ! 

As each student had his allowance of 
beer and butterbrod before him, of which 
he partook without 
minding the music, 
the words of this song 
were mostly uttered 
with the mouth full ; 
nor did the consump- 
tion of butterbrod at 
all interfere with the 
smoking, for a Ger- 
man student will 
smoke and eat as eas- 
ily as my friend the 
baron will smoke and 
sing. 

We stayed late. Be- 
fore leaving, Hohen- 
fels said to his young 
acquaint ance, "One 
thing is necessary to 
complete our joy in 
Heidelberg. How 
can we see a good 
duel?" 

" How ? Oh, any- 
how," answered the 
Baron of the Golden A FOX . 

Shower. 

"But when will a duel take place, if 
you please ?" 

"When ? Oh, any day." 

"Duels are accommodating to tourists." 
With this remark Hohenfels relinquish- 
ed a subject which he thought his friend 
seemed to surround with a certain ob- 
scurity. Conversing afterward among 
the students, however, he learned that a 
duel was really to happen in two days, 
and that Von Ramm was to be the hero. 
Hence his reticence. " It is with a young 
Fox from the University of Bonn, a for- 
eigner. There will be several other 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



I7i 



matches, but they will be simply trials 
of skill. Fritz has the only affair of mo- 
ment, good luck to him! The other 
man insulted our college." He was pro- 
ceeding to answer our questions as to 
the hour and the place, when the round 
face of the fat young student interposed 
and emitted the following decree : 

"Death to the Philisters ! These are 
secrets of the college. Profane ears 



must not hear where the university de- 
fends its honor." 

But we soon obtained an accurate di- 
rection from an old familiar acquaintance 
of mine. The ancient fire-tender and 
man of all work about the hotel was in 
reality none other than the postilion who 
had brought me into town at my first 
visit to Heidelberg: this worthy had a 
comrade, the wisest and best-informed 




THE STUDENTS. 



cab-driver in the dominion. The char- 
ioteer knew all about the honorable af- 
fairs of die H err en Studenten, and a 
duel with a baron in it was for him an 
open secret of his profession. At the 
appointed time we drove to the scene of 
action, where we found already two pro- 
cessions of carriages converging upon 
the spot from opposite directions. These 
were filled with students of the rival 
corps, their friends and their physicians : 
they carried almost enough lint, band- 
ages and other surgical apparatus to dress 
the wounds of a regiment in action. 
It was the baron's excursion rather 



than mine : I have never comprehended 
the duello. Its logic, for us moderns, 
appears to me incorrigibly faulty. In 
the Middle Ages it was different : then 
Heaven fought with the just man, as 
Heaven in Hebrew times presided over 
the drawing of lots. But now, in the 
nineteenth century, it is obvious that a 
good conscience does not give a man an 
experience of ten or a dozen years with 
small-swords. Technical skill may very 
probably lie with the side morally weak- 
est. This mode of adjudication must 
therefore be rejected as spurious. I 
yielded, however, with a good grace, 



172 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



and went off with Hohenfels to the seat 
of war. 

Some botanical specimens on the route 
attracted me, and the baron, best natured 
of men, conspired with me in my myrtle- 
chasing. When we arrived the friendly 
matches were all over, and the serious 
affair between Von Ramm and the for- 
eigner was under engagement. The lat- 
ter, whose back was toward me, smoked 
a pipe that out-Germaned Germany in 
its length and model, and he was lost in 



a pair of burlesque cavalry gloves from 
some theatre ; his horseman's boots sur- 
prised me, for they were made of alliga- 
tor's skin, and looked just fit to contain 
a bowie-knife or so ; his pantaloons, too, 
were unlike anything Rhenish, for they 
were of a fine pin-striped jean, more fa- 
miliar to the Mississippi than the Rhine. 
Except for a cuirass and fencing-mask 
he was unprotected. His adversary, 
however, whom it was difficult to recog- 
nize, was stuffed out into a state of de- 



( > > 




A PROFESSION WELL BOLSTERED. 



fence that made him appear gigantic. 
The student-duels on the Rhine are lit- 
erally a pillow-fight. This combatant 
had a mattress on his breast, wadding 
on his arms and cushions on his legs ; 
for it is with wool pulled over his eyes, 
and, I doubt not, cotton in his ears, that 
the Renowner achieves his fame. A fine 
meerschaum issued from Von Ramm's 
wire-woven visor, like a lily from a flow- 
er-basket. A sufficiency of seconds and 
students, their tinsel locks lying on their 
shoulders like epaulettes, stood solemnly 
around and contemplated battle's mag- 
nificently stern array. These assistants 
are often so completely encased in leath- 
er and pads that they could be blown up 



with gunpowder without much injury. 
It is their duty to stand by with a sword, 
intercept any unfair strokes, and stop 
the fight if their principal is wounded. 
The scars of a college duelist are gen- 
erally seen on his left cheek, and I un- 
derstood this fact .when I observed the 
play of Von Ramm, who seemed to be 
continually trying to cut over the guard 
of his opponent's sword-arm. He was 
an expert and graceful fencer, a hun- 
dred times lighter in all his stuffings than 
his unencumbered foe. The latter play- 
ed very singularly : he kept entirely on 
his defence, with little or no exhibition 
of swordsmanship, until the spectators 
became tired of the monotony of his 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



173 



game. All were looking with interest at 
the expert motions of the brilliant Lithua- 
nian, when finally, just as his second step- 
ped out to announce that the fifteen min- 
utes were up, the alligator-boots sprang 
forward, lunged at his neck, and deliver- 
ed the point so strongly that the opposing 
sword onlv succeeded in beating it down 




THE LINEN DUSTER. 



a little toward the shoulder. Von Ramm 
staggered into the arms of his friends, 
where he bled quite profusely from a 
scrape over his collar-bone : seeing him 
so unexpectedly hurt, Hohenfeis ran to 
his side. I prepared to re-enter our cab, 
very much disturbed and sickened, when 
the victor, who was examining the red- 
dened point of his sword in an attitude 
of impartial interest, said, in a nasal in- 
flection of my own language, "Guess 
I've euchred him with my little snick- 
ersnee !" The clumsy conqueror in al- 
ligator boots was then an American ! 
I have never known a national victory 
to give me so little satisfaction. With a 
feeling of shame and self-condemnation 
I returned alone to the hotel. We had 
undertaken our escapade among the 
students for the purpose of avoiding the 
contact of a lower mind, as we fancied : 
we wished to get among German phil- 
osophy, romance and Bohemianism. 
The return, I felt, was the return of a 



I blackguard. I was frustrated. I felt 
therefore repentant and civil toward 
, Berkley, whom I found at supper when 
, I had removed the dust and issued from 
my chamber. It was at the public table : 
Hohenfeis was still absent. By two 
movements of the head the English 
statesman and I expressed, on the one 
hand deprecation, on the other pardon 
and pity. A new-comer was sitting near, 
and to my great surprise this stranger 
nodded too, without, however, betraying 
the least intention of disturbing his hat, 
which was a small wide-awake set rather 
back from the forehead. 

"I saw you at the little unpleasant- 
ness :" this explanation he kindly added 
to his salute. He proceeded : " It is dif- 
ficult to recognize folks through a wire 
basket, but my memory for faces is good : 
I am something of an artist." 

The nasal accent revealed the man 
with alligator's legs. One of those san- 
guinary brutes of the battle-field was 
doing me the honor to claim me as an 
acquaintance, and to share my supper 
red-handed. His present appearance, 
at least, was pacific : he had come out 
of his alligator skin, and he wore that 
garment which the American tourist flut- 
ters like a victorious flag all round the 
world, and which, made variously of 
gray, white or yellow, is known as the 
linen duster. He was drinking coffee out 
of a larger cup than is usual for that be- 
verage at a European dinner, but of a 
size familiar on most breakfast-tables in 
the United States. 

"You are noticing my cup: I carry it 
around. They make this cup at Dres- 
den very largely for the American trade : 
I am something of an importer. I can- 
not enjoy my coffee out of one of these 
poppycock thimbles they give you at a 
table-d'hote, and I must have my coffee 
just so : I'm something of an epicure." 
I judged it necessary to say a word to 
Berkley : "This gentleman, who appears 
to be my compatriot, has just pinked his 
man in an affair with a person I have 
met before — a musical pilgrim at Ach- 
ern, in fact, who joked with me on bo- 
tanical subjects in the character of a 
student of pharmacy." 



174 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



" No more of a pharmacy-student than 
my cane : I'm something of an apoth- 
ecary. He said our Western colleges 
were only primary schools, which it was 
a State disgrace to charter as univer- 
sities. He totally denied the merit of 
Ann Arbor, asserting he had never heard 
of it. A college where they pick up a 
new asteroid every fine night ! I've 
been at Ann Arbor: I'm something of 
an astronomer. I never fought before, 
but on that I asked him out for a walk, 
and I just waited for his jugular." 

"You showed great coolness, certain- 
ly," I said in a kinder tone. I found 
something chivalresque in this young 
stranger, who had never fought a duel, 
coolly engaging an old hand in de- 
fence of his country's educational ad- 
vantages. 

"Yes, I am probably cool. I simply 
waited for his jugular. I had to wait for 
nearly all the quarter of an hour, but 
then he gave it me. You see, gentle- 
men, for a raw swordsman to engage an 
older one is an interesting, not to say a 
difficult, problem in the correlation of 
forces. My plan, which has succeeded, 
was, to go through the fight without try- 
ing to make any thrusts, and confine my 
attention to parrying : I thus got an ad- 
vantage of fifty per cent, over my man, 
whose intellect was divided between 
the two schemes of parry and thrust. 
The watchfulness demanded in this ex- 
ercise is simply the equal allotment of 
neurotic power through the nerve- 
branches of the whole body and limbs ; 
this is harder than what is called pres- 
ence of mind, which is only the concen- 
tration of force in a single organ, the 
brain. Thus, having put eyes, as it were, 
all over my arms and legs, I felt per- 
fectly calm and sure he couldn't touch 
me. I had decided beforehand on this 
game, and to uncover my sally-ports 
only at the last. I was kept aware of 
the exact passage of time by my second, 
who made a signal every four minutes : 
that was the fellow who rigged me out, 
some theatrical fool from Munich. After 
the third four minutes, knowing my ad- 
versary was tired and unprepared, I cut 
just as his second was stepping forward 




to stop the fight. I had luck, and I 
reached his jugular or near it." 

And calmly attentive to us, he poured 
down a draught of coffee. 

" My order of sensations," he continued 
musingly, " was not 
dissimilar to what 
I have experienced 
at the Stock Ex- 
change. There, 
too, we are obliged 
to combine ideas 
with rapidity, to be 
on continual guard, 
and to be ready 
wi t h the nerve- 
force : I am some- 
thing of a specula- 
tor. FACTOTUM. 

I looked anew 
at this surprising, unsurprisable Amer- 
ican. I made sure that he was from the 
West. His proportions were not quite 
harmonious: his legs and his duster 
were long and lean, but his trunk, hat 
and head were squat. It is generally 
said that the American race is ap- 
proaching in physique the character of 
the native Indians, but it may be ob- 
served that if a certain class of my coun- 
trymen, led by temperament and predi- 
lection, are allying themselves with that 
branch of our barbarous population, 
there is a second class obviously assim- 
ilating with our other semi-civilized in- 
gredient, the negro. Who has not seen, 
on American faces perfectly Saxon in 
their white-and-pink pigments, the ne- 
gro's round nostril, blubber lips, curled 
eyelashes and depressed skull, together 
with the small, handsome, rudimentary 
ears, like the bruised ears you find on 
antique statues of Hercules ? Our new 
acquaintance was of this type. His 
nose was fat, his lips large, his hair pale 
and bushy. There was something of the 
albino in his appearance. 

As he sauntered out picking his teeth 
I called the man-of-all work. The old 
fellow came up, decorated with his trous- 
seau of keys. I asked him familiarly if 
he knew my young countryman. " Is 
there anything peculiar about the habits 
or luggage of this Yankee ?" 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



175 



"Faith, sir, he took a little corner 
room in the garret, among the maids 
and kellners. He travels with nothing 
but a French horn, and a small bag 
which is all papered over with the labels 
of the express companies. One of the 
cards is marked New Orleans, Louisiana, 
Adams : the rest are . distributed over 




SERMONS IN STONES. 



Belgium and Germany, one of them 
reading Brussels, one Liverpool, and one 
Bonn. He is something of a Wandering 
Jew." 

" That is quite enough," I said, ashamed 
to seem so inquisitive. "You understand 
your station, and have made good use of 
your eyes. Take this, and go off and 
drink your beer with my man Charles." 

It was the custom of Sylvester Berkley 
to clamber up every morning to the 
Molkenkur, where he drenched himself 
liberally with whey. I once accompanied 
him and enjoyed the spectacle : the un- 
certain and testy character of the Berk- 
leys was ameliorating sensibly under my 



eyes with repeated washes of the emol- 
lient liquor. Sylvester went so far as to 
bathe in it. With him, too, I chose to 
visit the most coquettish and artificial 
part of the ruined castle, the Rittersaal 
of Otho-Henry : its mixed Renaissance 
style gave occasion for a hundred lec- 
tures to so good an antiquarian as Berk- 
ley was, and I came away 
from his orations with an 
increased respect for bric- 
a-brac. On the lower part 
of its front are four statues 
— Hercules son of Jupiter, 
Samson the lieutenant of 
God, David the brave and 
prudent boy, and " Herzog 
Joshua, who killed thirty- 
one kings by the grace of 
the Lord." On the inside 
this tower offered a scene 
of lovely devastation : 
wild vines and flowers 
hung with insolent grace 
among the florid carved- 
work of the doors, through 
which used to pass high- 
stepping dames of the 
Palatinate in sables and 
feathers, but whose guests 
now are owls and crows, 
sometimes spotted or man- 
tled with ermine of snow. 
Berkley, familiar with 
Heidelberg, was indeed 
the best of ciceroni. Vis- 
iting alone with him the 
Rent Tower — which un- 
der the reminiscences of Hohenfels had 
seemed more of a grenier than aught 
else — I comprehended its majesty as 
symbolizing the power of Frederick I., 
the Victorious, who beat Frederick IV. 
and the German princes at Seckenheim. 
It was eighty feet high, its walls on one 
side twenty feet thick: this monstrous 
shell was crushed by Louis XIV. like a 
filbert, while at present, as if to keep the 
warlike deed of the French nut-cracker 
for a show, the rent portion is restrained 
from crumbling in the mighty talons of 
the trees. My diplomate knew all these 
doughty Palatines like ancestors. After 
Frederick the Victorious, he elucidated 



176 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



Ludwig V. and Frederick V. : their 
statues lean against the shadowy wall 
of what was built as the Great Tower. 
Frederick V., who married the grand- 
daughter of Mary Queen of Scots, and 
died in exile, retains on his marble brow 
that crown of Bohemia which he ac- 
cepted after its re- 
fusal by the powers - s 
of Austria, Saxony, 
Savoy and Den- 
mark ; but he has 
lost the two hands 
with which he grasp- 
ed it. Ludwig V., 
whose figure stands 
near by, is not less 
gloomy : he seems 
to know that the 
Great Tower hangs 
in ruin behind him 
as he watches the 
ivy advance little by 
little over his stone 
face. The man of 
useful information 
had for each of these 
heroes a date and 
an anecdote: he 
gave a voice to all 
the petrified chiefs 
vainly standing in 
defence before their 

towers, from Charlemagne, who had lost 
his globe, to Otho of Hungary, who has 
but one leg, and Otho -Henry of the 
bric-a-brac tower, who has been bereft 
of his hand, and Frederick II., who is 
broken in half, and Frederick IV., who 
has dropped his sceptre, and Frederick 
the Victorious himself, among whose 
marble plumes the green leaves of ruin 
are playing. It is in such a spot and 
with such a guide that you learn how 
history may be better than legend. If I 
had had so wise a counselor here in 
my student days, I should perhaps have 
quoted less of Jean Paul and more of 
Clio. But at this period my Mentor was 
Hohenfels, then at his own cloudiest stage 
of development, who adored Goethe and 
insulted Tiedge, who knew the Niebel- 
ungen-Lied by heart, but could only rid- 
icule the sketches, screech-owls, fallow- 



deer and straddle-bug figures of worthy 
Charles de Graimberg, the artist who for 
thirty years collected here in his cham- 
bers a museum of prints and books and 
pictures illustrating Heidelberg. I have 
not yet heard Sylvester ridicule a work 
of art : if the specimen be of a grand 




SATIRE IN STONE. 



master, he respects it ; if it be art of 
the Decadence, somewhat low, poor, im- 
proper and profane, he adores it, and 
moves heaven and earth that he may 
buy it — the true spirit of the connoisseur. 
As we stood in the Rittersaal, the spec- 
tacle of the rosy Renaissance nymphs 
and nereids evoked from him his very 
best effort, an eloquence superior to the 
Neues Schloss and a piety beyond the 
stone Calvary. For my poor part, re- 
plete and saturated with historic lore, I 
would not have exchanged the trumpet 
of Fame herself against the flaring sil- 
very rim, bright with starch, of that all- 
encircling cravat. 

I would only have given a world pop- 
ulated with Berkleys for my dream-rid- 
den poet, my friend, my baron, the ac- 
complice of my student-life. 

Heidelberg Castle is comparatively un- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



177 



hurt in front. The symmetrical profile 
of its long facade, with gables and pin- 
nacles, the repose of St. Udalrich's chap- 
el and the be -ribboned smartness of 
Otho-Henry's palace, speak little of de- 
cay : it is like a fair mask lying in an 
Egyptian coffin, and concealing a terri- 
ble heap of bones and broken jewels, 
and tufts of dry hair and shreds of rich 
clothing. 

And then, what a satire .it is that all 
this stately masonry should be but the 




" ONE FISH-BALL. 

complicated envelope of the biggest 
drinking-cask in the world ! 

I prolonged my walks with Berkley 
to the Schwalbennest (Swallow's Nest), 
the square tower which leans so directly 
over the Neckar from the heights of its 
mountain at Neckarsteinach. The inex- 
haustible cravat of the philosopher was 
still pouring out useful information from 
its polished lip, and I was listening to 
the tale of Bligger the Scourge, whose 
soldiers closed up this tower and left him 
to die when the pope excommunicated 
him, when of a sudden I heard the notes 
of a French horn from the river below. 
I borrowed the field -glass which hung 
eternally from Berkley's shoulder by a 
leathern baldrick, and there in a little 
boat I saw our Yankee, who was drifting 
past us on the river and relieving his 
soul with the soldiers' march from Faust. 
I watched with amusement this versatile 
pattern of my country's civilization. In 
a moment he had thrown down his in- 
strument and had rowed himself care- 
fully into the current. This necessity 
fulfilled, his mind seemed to be at peace 
12 



again, and he flung himself flat on his 
back in the bows. Another instant, and 
a fresh wave of melody came up to us 
in our watch-tower : this time it was 
vocal, and the virtuoso was pouring out 
with the full power of his lungs to the 
Vosges Mountains that classic morsel 
known as " One Fish-Ball." Directly he 
had exhausted this sensation too, but his 
resources were not yet at an end ; un- 
folding a cast-net which lay beneath the 
thwarts, he flung it skillfully out into the 
broadest part of the stream ; and I hope 
that the fishes of the Neckar, judicious- 
ly charmed by the noise of the horn and 
the song, made no delay in engaging 
their gills among the meshes of this en- 
ergetic young sportsman. Berkley, in 
compliment to me, looked on at the 
vagaries of my countryman with a sad, 
forgiving politeness : I begged him to 
finish his story of Bligger the Scourge. 
It was now sunset, and when I looked 
again for the Yankee, he was vanishing 
like Hiawatha, high upon a sea of splen- 
dor, and teaching the echoes to repeat 
the adventures of Jeronimus Jobs, hero 
of that original epic the " Jobsiad." Ten 
minutes sufficed for my brilliant compa- 
triot to prove that he was something of 
an oarsman, something of a fisherman, 
something of a vocalist, and something 
of a hornblower. 

The linen duster was visible again at 
supper, twenty-four hours after our first 
meal with him. I sent him a mouthful 
of my Prince Metternich by the trusty 
Charles, and he grasped his hat and 
came over to touch glasses with Sylvester 
and myself. 

"Your wine is not so bad, but in this 
confounded country I can get nothing 
but the superfluities — an intolerable deal 
of sack and not one ha'penn'orth of 
bread. At Bonn, and here, too, I had 
to dine without my crust." 

"I have hardly noticed it," said I, 
"but here I believe it has always been 
so." 

" I have seen the day when I would have 
given a dollar for a corn-cake or a bit of 
pone. They gave me at dinner with the 
soup a pretty cake, a sort. of brioche. I 
just flung it at the man and asked for 



1 7 8 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



bread. Then he came up bringing a 
little biscuit stuck full of aniseed. Then 
I asked for bread again, and he brought 
me a turn-over full of plums and cher- 
ries, as if I had been Jack Horner, by 
Jingo ! I stopped there, or he would 
have offered me every tart and pudding 
they turn out in the pastry- 
shops. I vow I don't like -— ■- 
it : I am something of a 
Grahamite." 

"It is just the same at 
our table," I said, apply- 
ing myself to a kind of 
sausage or mince -meat 
which I was consuming, 
and which had prunes 
in it. 

"The Repast without 
Bread," said Berkley, 
who saw the chance for 
an oration, "is an ancient 
tradition of the country, a legend en- 
closing the finest political rebuke ever 
made by the producing to the governing 
classes. The present observance, though, 
is probably an involuntary sequel to the 
old proverb." 

"Oh! I thought likely," said the 
youth with a shrewd air, and indicating 
my sausage, "that they just didn't give 
bread with one fish-ball" 

"Frederick the Victorious," pursued 
Sylvester, disdaining the interruption, 
"after conquering the robber-knights at 
Seckenheim, treated them famously, and 
had them all to a feast. Everything was 
magnificent, but when the guests called 
for bread, there was none to be had. 
' My lords,' said Frederick, ' those whose 
life's trade it is to trample the grain, 
burn the mills and plant the fields with 
corpses must not ask for bread : that 
boon of industry is for other mouths 
than ours.' And he resumed his courteous 
talk as if nothing had happened. It was 
a fine Corn-Law speech of the date of 
1461." 

"Perhaps so," I agreed; "but it is un- 
fortunate that the lesson is not learned 
yet in the country, and must be enforced 
at the expense of strangers. By the by, a 
pretty girl that," I said, willing to adopt 
a slightly rakish tone with my young I 



guest, and winking indulgently as a 
handsome laundress made her escape 
past the dining-room windows, a kind 
of Briareus of surreptitious stockings 
tossing multitudinously from out of her 
apron. 

"Pretty girl! you must be fond of a 




THE CAST-NET. 

pretty girl !" sneered the stony-hearted 
student, with his first exhibition of tem- 
per. " If all the pretty girls of Europe 
were under the river in that seine of 
mine, it would not be I who should draw 
them out." 

I felt surprised, and perhaps rebuked. 
I assumed a rather grand manner : "Your 
name must be Saint Anthony ! Apropos, 
may we know how to call the guest with 
whom the custom of the place lets us 
share our cup, but not our loaf?" 

"No objection," said the Yankee with 
a business-like air; and he opened his 
pocket-book, from which a card fell be- 
side my plate. "Catch it! Not that," 
he said, and extracted another. I read 
them both without particular intention. 
On one was printed " John Kranich" 
on the other " Jean Kraaniff" "Ah, 
now you have seen it," said the young 
man, in an easy, unembarrassed way, 
"and all the fat's in the fire. Well, we 
are a good way from New Orleans, and I 
may as well tell you all about it. You 
are a literary man, I judge, and per- 
haps you can help me to utilize my 
anagram." 

"Your anagram ?" I asked. 

"The anagram of Jean Kraaniff, you 
observe, may be Jean K. Ffarina. I 
think that will do for New Orleans. I 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



179 



am known there as a wine and spirits 
merchant. From bay rum to cologne 
water is no great step. My game is to 
ally myself with the Farina family, rep- 
resent in Louisiana the whole perfumery 




" YOU ARE THE MAN OF THE TWO CHICKENS !" 

business of Cologne and Paris, and some 
day monopolize the Western States, South 
America and the Pacific Islands. How 
do you like the notion ?" 

"I am the last man to consult in a 
matter of trade," I replied: "your name 
seems to have a superfluous letter." 

"Oh, that 4 K' will do for anything: 
kind means a child, Koeln means Co- 
logne, you see — or I can drop the K. 
That is not what troubles me. Unhap- 
pily, plenty of people have seen my old 
card, the one you first read, and it will 
be tough to ask them to believe, as I 
mean to do, that I am a genuine Farina, 
who arranged his letters into Kraaniff 
because he was poor. Worse luck ! my 
expectations come from the other name, 
from Kranich. Yes, aunty's name is 
Kranich, and be hanged to her !" 

"I beg your pardon," said I, a sudden 
thought striking me, "but I have long 
known a lady of that name, and — " 

" Have you ? It is not so difficult, for 
she has lived in every capital of Europe. 
Now it is Brussels ; a while back it was 
Paris ; my christening-cup she forwarded 
from Frankfort. My ridiculous old uncle 



was somebody, my absurd old father was 
nobody, and so I was sent to exile with 
the grand duke of Mississippi. My poor 
uncle the banker was as crazy as a loon." 

" I have seen him at a ball in a bed- 
gown." 

"The ding-dong-deuce you have !" said 
the duelist, very slowly and mistrustfully. 

"Frau Kranich was at Ems with him 
that season. He popped in to her ball 
and fainted, and the duke of Mississippi 
carried him to his chamber. But your 
aunt is a good soul. I cannot forget how 
she assisted me to the prettiest piece of 
work I have ever done. It was a bit of 
charity. Poor sweet little Francine ! I 
hope she will make no bad investment 
of her dowry." 

"Why, then," said the young man, 
rising and looking very black, " you in- 
fernal, oily, amorous old hypocrite ! you 
are the man of the two chickens /" 

People have different ways of meeting 
an outrage. I simply rose, conveyed my 
surprise and indignation in a look, and 
left the table and the room. Between a 
limb like this and a person of my age 
and phlegm no great insult was possible. 
The young man turned on his heel, 
grasped his hat again, and went to join 
his companion, a German who had 
served as second in his contest. It was 
a student of pinched and beery appear- 
ance, I remember, with fingers blazing 
with stones, ears hung with rings, and 
between them a round face bejeweled 
with gold eye-glasses. 

Berkley would probably have gone 
out with me, but at that moment Ho- 
henfels came rambling in to supper, 
cheery and star-gazing as usual, the 
duelist Von Ramm interlaced with him 
like double cherries moulded on one 
stem. I had rather repulsed my old 
friend while in this companionship, and 
now felt no appetite for duelists. " You'll 
have but ill bred to your supper," I said 
hastily in the door ; and leaving him this 
choice pun, for which the baron would 
soundly have trounced me had he un- 
derstood it, I went out with a little gesture 
of avoidance. 




zp^irt zm. 



ON WITH THE OLD LOVE 




THE WEAPONS. 



A GREAT walk that I took in the 
moonlight, a complete ascent of 
the Little Geissberg, cleaned out my ill- 
humor entirely. Besides, my conscience 
was clear. I slept like a log, and. was 
healthily confused in my senses when 
aroused by the opening of my chamber 
door in the morning. 

"What game is afoot for to-day?" I 
asked, still entangled in my visions of 
the night. 

"A chance unparalleled," said the di- 
plomatist, who entered dressed, gloved, 
cravatted and enwreathed with smiles. 
"A diamond day — one of the few choice 
sunrises of this uncertain spot for the 
1 80 



present season. The game, as you call 
it, is an excursion to Schwetzingen. The 
castle is immense — fountains, cascades, 
statues. If Heidelberg is Germany's Al- 
hambra, Schwetzingen is her Versailles. 
You will be delighted, enchanted." (An 
unusual briskness was injected just now 
into Sylvester's periods: his style was 
growing staccato ; but I took little no- 
tice.) " Come, here is your coat. Break- 
fast is over, but Charles has some sand- 
wiches in your botany-box, and a flask 
of hot coffee. The driver is waiting." 

And truly the faithful servitor appear- 
ed panting on the scene, his face striped 
with sweat, his hands filled with bags 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



181 




MY STIMULUS. 



and valises, my sandwiches put to warm 
under his arm-pit. At the carriage-door, 
" Come, man, bundle up. Coachman, 
run like a greyhound to Schwetzingen !" 
said Sylvester. 

"Which seat do you like, Berkley?" 
said I, making 
ro om for him 
among m y con- 
veniences. 

"Oh, / don't 
go," observed the 
.statesman with his 
most diplomatic 
smile: "I have 
seen it a hundred 
times. You really 
must let me off." 

"And Hohen- 
fels?" 

" Hohenfels has 
been up these two hours, and is over at 
the college. He has mixed himself in 
with drugs, chemicals and everything 
you detest. The pharmacy-student has 
put him up to it. If you could see him 
now it would be with a cowskin apron 
around him or in a glass mask and a 
smock-frock." 

"But if the baron does not accompany 
me, you must." 

" Let me off for this time, my dear sir. 
I am myself implicated in his experi- 
ments, and for once in your life you will 
be a good riddance. 'Tis something we 
discussed before you arrived, the direct 
creation of whey by macerating grass 
and turnips in the natural rennets. Good- 
bye. You can be back with us by din- 
ner if you insist. Drive on, coachman." 
" Drive on, coachman," echoed Charles, 
slipping a florin with vast secresy into 
the man's hand. "Drive on as though 
Saint Denis were throwing his head at 
you." 

On the route, as I sat pretty passive, 
Charles kept feeding me assiduously out 
of the tin box, stopping my mouth with 
a croquette or a leathery egg whenever 
I showed signs of asking a question. He 
prolonged this exercise for nearly an 
hour, the wheels bowling smoothly and 
the landscape running softly behind us. 
At last, choking with tears and heroical- 



ly sinking back in the cushions, he said, 
" Saved, thank all the saints ! I can no 
more !" 

"It is then, as I began to suspect, a 
plot," I exclaimed. "As you value your 
life and my service, let me hear all 
about it." 

" It is only that I have saved the life 
of the dear patron," said Charles. "See, 
here in these bags are all your clothes, 
just as I brought them from Marly. 
Monsieur is self-supporting, self-escaping 
and self acting, like a watch. Never, 
never need monsieur see these accursed 
stones and students more." 

"But this is treason," I cried, growing 
excited. "In you, Charles, it is flat re- 
bellion. I will not bear it." 

"And an opera-hat in the large valise, 
and a small alarm wrapped up in his 
evening coat." 

"Tell me the whole mystery, stupid," 




AMATEUR CHEMISTS. 

I shouted; "but first — No! turn the 
horses immediately." 

"Monsieur must condescend to hear 
my story first. It will be time enough 
to turn back when he knows the troubles 
we have saved him from." And with 



182 



7W.fi: NEW HYPERION. 



this my faithful idiot, after the manner 
of Sultana Scheherezade of old, plunged 
into a torrent of garrulity, with the pure 
object of making time. 

"It seems, these Americans," said 
Charles, who never dreamed of includ- 
ing his employer under the designation, 
"are man-eaters and everything that is 
barbarous. Yonder Aztec from Bonn 
ought to be put in a cage at the Jardin 
des Plantes. I know whereof I talk, and 
that the savage, although he makes a 
feint of attending the lectures at Bonn, 
is no more a student than my shoe. He 
is a serpent out of a menagerie, who 
roves over Europe, and they say he has 
already exercised his vile fascinations on 
a poor young girl, whom he has slimed 
ready to devour." (Charles, not dis- 
contented with this careful metaphor, re- 
peated it over again.) "Monsieur must 
know that his questions put to the ser- 
viceable man of the hotel awakened my 
ambition. With the assistance of that 
worthy person I have made inquiries 
among the university students. The 
stranger is known. His cold and calcu- 
lating malice is incalculable, it is fatal. 
It is proper to rid the country of such a 
demon. Not a student but trembles at 
the thought of the bowie-knives which 
are concealed in the legs of this croco- 
dile, and of the inexhaustible barrels of 
his revolvers of Colt." 

Thus Charles, evidently sketching 
some hero whom he had relished at 
the Porte Saint-Martin Theatre. When 
brought round to a simple narrative of 
the scene at the supper-table, I found 
that matters of some moment had indeed 
taken place in my absence. Berkley 
the statesman, it appears, had been ir- 
resolute, unwilling to fly from the enemy, 
and hesitating between diplomacy and 
the underlying pugnacity of his temper, 
which the stranger's speech was well 
fitted to rouse. The arrival of Hohen- 
fels and the American's late opponent 
had added fuel to the flame, and a wordy 
quarrel had arisen, the man in the linen 
duster quickly relapsing into the meas- 
ured, cold, provoking style of banter. 
The dispute was raging when the late 
arrival of a pair of travelers at supper — 



one a lady — had suppressed all demon- 
strations. Charles had noticed the cav- 
alier, a handsome man in a gray over- 
coat. This person, it would appear, had 
some knowledge of the miscreant call- 
ing himself Jean KraanifT. At any rate, 




SOLICITUDE, 



after supper, the quarrel was renewed in 
the billiard-room. Hohenfels (who, bless 
his heart ! knew about as much about 
firearms as a nightingale) was for pistols 
and twenty paces ; his alter ego, Von 
Ramm, preferred swords, without the 
usual mattresses ; when the new arrival 
in the gray coat had begged to assume 
the whole combat. "I think M. Kraa- 
nifT knows me — we are both wine-sell- 
ers," he said ( Charles had evidently 
been polishing a keyhole near the con- 
ference). " I have already been insulted 
by him, and I choose the weapons." He 
then, with a singular mixture of author- 
ity and lordly good-nature, dictated a 
novel sort of combat. Himself and the 
stranger were to play so many games 
of dominoes. ("As Monsieur Paul is a 
Latin scholar, I suppose I should say 
dominiy said Charles proudly.) They 
were then to drink Rhine wine until one 
of them was lifeless. Mr. Berkley was 
to see fair play. The loser was to quit 
the country, drown himself in the river, 
or otherwise vanish from the terrestrial 
sphere. The fearful combat began, the 
games of dominoes were won about equal- 
ly, but at the wine-match the American 
failed, and lost his stiffness joint by joint 
under the third bottle, while the other 
improved in wisdom and gravity. As 
he won the match, the conqueror made 
the American sign some paper, which he 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



83 



was just able to do, and which the Eng- 
lish official witnessed. Charles of course 
knew nothing about the paper's contents. 
" But I can report the final speeches, 
which were made about sunrise this 
morning. ' If I can get Mr. Flemming 
quietly out of the way, it will be the 
triumph of a life's diplomacy.' Those 
were the words of Mr. Berkley, and I 




GALLANTRY. 



thought them most noble. ' This robber 
of women is harmless for the present,' 
said M. Fortnoye." 

"M. Fortnoye?" 

"Certainly — M. Fortnoye, the purveyor 
of wines for the hotel. The serviceable 
person had monsieur the purveyor's room 
all ready against his arrival. But he has 
never been seen before in company with 
a beautiful lady, as last night." 

This recital gave me abundant food 
for thought. Berkley's spasm of gayety, 
and his whole ingenious manner of get- 
ting rid of me, were approved without 
much hesitation. But it gave me a pang 
to reflect that Hohenfels had been drawn 
into disputes for me, and that I had re- 
treated without even wringing his hand : 
please Heaven, we should yet renew our 
twinship among the ruins of Heidelberg. 
The sudden apparition of Fortnoye gave 
me cause for jealous alarm — the famil- 
iarity with which he was escorting his 
fair companion, whom, as Francine, I 
could not mistake, was most disagreeable 
in every way to my feelings. 

With all this on my mind the fairy 



show of Schwetzingen was lost upon me. 
Charles, I believe, found it an Elysium, 
and wandered through the clipped laby- 
rinths with a delighted spirit ; but for me 
the heart was wanting to admire the ter- 
races and grottoes, the bandy-legged 
leaden statues, the fountains formed of 
spouting birds, the trim cataracts and 
little shaving-glass of a lake. I entered 
a convenient house, called, I believe, the 
"Imperial Baths," and tapped idly at a 
window. A couple passed before the 
panes, and were about vanishing through 
the shrubbery. . The lady, handsomely 
dressed, showed me little but the ample 
rotundity of her back, disguised in the 
superfluous paniers and puffings with 
which stout females ever prefer to aug- 
ment their personal majesty. The gen- 
tleman was gallantly shading her from 
the sun with an umbrella of white Chi- 
nese silk lined with azure. His gait, his 
hat and his overcoat of silver-gray seem- 
ed familiar. He caught a half glimpse 
of me, and quickly returned. He was 
now alone, but through a glass corridor 
I saw the lady enter the house where I 
was sheltered. She was decidedly stout, 
but did not lack the "grand air." Fort- 
noye, for he it was, was now running up 
to me. 

"Dear Mr. Flemming," he cried with 
a hearty grasp of my hand, "I am en- 
chanted to meet you — enchanted selfish- 
ly and unselfishly. I am in great haste : 
you will let me explain. I have just 
arrived hither with a lady, who must go 
this evening to Frankfort. I knew her 
late husband in circles connected with 
my business. She will arrive there at 
night — she cannot go alone. For my 
own part, an affair of real importance — 
real importance, or I would not ask you 
— recalls me to Heidelberg. You are 
doubtless on the way to Frankfort ?" 

I had certainly not said I was going 
to Frankfort. But it was not easy to 
confess how short my excursion was 
really intended to be, and thus give the 
impression that I had run away just for 
a morning from my enemy at Heidel- 
berg. But who could be my proposed 
companion ? Fortnoye's arrival with a 
fair comrade the night before had been 



1S4 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



explained by his acquaintance with Fran- 
cine. A load was taken from my mind 
by the conjecture that, after all, it might 
not have been she ; and certainly it was 
hard to imagine the natty Francine trans- 
formed by any freak or volume of crino- 
line into the opulent and noble figure I 
had glimpsed among the shrubbery. At 
any rate, my dream of immediately re- 
joining Hohenfels at Heidelberg was 
postponed. 

But the lady had entered the building, 
and at this moment I both saw and heard 
her behind some screens of double glass. 
She was giving a fee to an aproned servi- 
tor of the place, old, owlish-looking and 
discreet, who quickly produced some 
towels. Her words, slow and measured, 
were, " I like them fine : I shall be visible 
in twenty minutes." 

The contours I had not recognized. 
But the contralto's mellow music was 
what has rung in my ears from the first 
spring-time of my manhood ; and I have 
often thought I should like to grow stone 
deaf, so as to have that voice, and noth- 
ing more vulgar, flowing perpetually to 
my brain. It was the voice I had last 
heard reading prayers in a bed-room of 
the hotel at Stuttgart. 

I tapped the window still, in a reverie, 
as Fortnoye explained how my carriage 
could be re-engaged to conduct us to the 
railway, how Charles would relieve the 
lady and myself of all minor trouble, 
and how the preferable hotel at Frank- 
fort had its frontage on the parade- 
ground. Presently the chandelier shook, 
and a faint perfume I knew floated on to 
me. I was being presented. 

The well - known voice had struck 
again its bell-like music. I looked up 
from my conventional obeisance. An 
immeasurable pyramid of black silk and 
Cashmerean yellow stood before me ; 
and at the summit of a broad, many- 
chinned face, drowned out in a waste of 
healthy, well-fed tissues, shone the eyes 
of Mary Ashburton ! 

The first excursion I ever took with 
Mary Ashburton was in that unlucky 
barouche to the Valley of Lauterbrunnen. 
Then, we were off for a picnic ; now, I 
was flying with her to the city of the 



bankers, on a hot May day, in a railway- 
carriage softened to the feet with Brussels 
carpet and stuffed up to the eyes with 




THE DISCREET SERVITOR. 

drab cassimere and coach-lace. The 
bivouac wildness was missing which I 
used to describe when I would ask the 
reader if he knew the taste of cold meat 
under the shadows of trees. Colder than 
thy meats, O Vale of Fountains, were 
the hearts of thy lady-visitors ! Wretch- 
ed was the cheer I had from thee, land 
of the glacier and the goat, of chalets 
and of chamois, of poetry and of water- 
colors, of recitations and of students in 
green who wormed themselves into my 
path with their whispers of Beware I 
Cold meat, indeed ! When I remarked 
to Miss Ashburton that I had never seen 
Chamouni, and she vivaciously said that 
in my place she would not lose an hour 
in going thither, the taste of the cold 
shoulder which she thus presented to me 
struck chills to my palate and rankled 
there for ten good years at least. I do 
not know why I, recall those hard meas- 
ures which were meted to me in Inter- 
laken : I certainly did not think of them 
when I was privileged to ride with her 
again, and her presence, augmented to 
thrice as much as I had the thought or 



THE XEW HYPER '/OX. 



I8 5 



- '- -_:'" ■■■■- - 



s 






**- 



■'-:• : ^--. 







right of expecting, was palpably by my 
side. 

My reception by Man- Ashburton (or 
Mrs. Ashburleigh, as she had christened 
herself; was a delight without the ghost 
of a complaint. For the Dark Ladye 
was no longer unapproachable. On the 
contrary, she received my homage very 
graciously, and indeed overbore me, 
flooded me and saturated me with a 
stream of hopes and wishes. Nothing 
that I had ever thought or felt before 
could stand for a moment in this grand, 
imperial influence : even the Mary Ash- 
burton of 18 — (when her weight could 
not have been over ninety pounds did 
not constitute a vision of anything like 
the distinctness. I sat, like O'Shanter 
on his mare, enveloped in a whirling 
sphere of witchery and incantation : no 
previous impression had the least chance 
of remaining. Francine Joliet's cap- 
strings in the mad storm drove away 
from my sight like white phantoms, level, 
helpless and confused in the hurlyburly. 
"Oh, madam !" I said in my corner, sit- 
ting with that rotary action of the thumbs 
which to my mind best expresses the rapt 
soul — " Oh, madam, why cannot I attach 
myself to you for ever?" 

"You are on mv skirts now, I think," 



she observed, just developing a kind of 
generalized marble smile from her noble 
chin. 

Was there ever such a quick repartee : 
On her skirts ! — like a purple bur or a 
fragrant brier, clinging with even.- ten- 
tacle of my nature as she traveled, and, 
what was better, admitted in her speech 
as such ! Was it not a virtual invitation ? 
It is only married ladies — perhaps only 
widows — who should permit themselves 
these chaste doubles-entendres ; but the 
expression, as it stood, was perfect. This 
was only the first of the good things 
which Mrs. Ashburleigh uttered — gems 
of language which perhaps would have 
escaped a less keen listener than myself 
— felicities disguised in apparent com- 
monplace and indicating the most adroit 
self-mastery of a creative talent — pro- 
verbial pith, fit to make Swift burn his 
Bons-mots de Stella, or Tupper publish 
the marvels in another volume of his 
philosophical writings. 

Thus we traveled like a dream, passing 
Mannheim and Darmstadt. We sped 
from place to place without my giving 
a thought to the data of Progressive Ge- 
ography. Equally obliterated from my 
brain was the compatriot who had in- 
sulted me at the hotel, the young son of 



i86 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



commerce who had seemed so cold, so 
versatile, so truly American, until my 
mention of Francine had driven him 
into a fury perfectly worthy of the Lat- 
in nations. The young man and his im- 
pertinence slept undisturbed in my mind. 
It was all I could do to realize that Mary 
Ashburton or her double — perhaps, in 
truth, her quadruple — was traveling, not 
unkind, by my side. 

" Don't you remember, Mr. Flemming, 
when I met you in Venice ? — or was it 
at Brighton ? — " 

" Oh, my dear madam, surely you are 
jesting : we met first at Interlaken. 
Have you forgotten your sketch of the 
Lake of Thun — forgotten the Staub- 
bach ?" 

" I really must confess that I have, or, 
at any rate, whatever happened there." 

It was with this peculiar delicacy that 
she indicated how a veil was to be drawn 



over every circumstance of that Past so 
painful to me. Was it not kind ? She 
continued : "Wherever it was, there was 
a large hotel, or a palazzo, or something 
of the sort, and outside it was always 
raining, and I used to let you read my 
diary. Would you like to repeat your 
lessons ? I am something of a blue even 
now." 

She fumbled in her little satchel. I 
waited as for the delivery of a Sibylline 
scroll. Every emanation from that rare 
intellect had a holiness for me. Extract- 
ing a book, and passing over a few print- 
ed pages containing, apparently, wash- 
ing - accounts, my superb companion 
pointed out to me the following prose 
ballad. She remarked that she had 
written it out the evening before. "When 
I have finished one of my writings, and 
there is any kind of a literary person 
near, I am ready to die until I get it ex- 




THE EARLY BIRD-CATCH EK . 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



187 



amined. That good creature Fortnoye 
would have received it if I had not met 
you. For mercy's sake, read it, and tell 
me if it is nonsense. We can relate our 
histories to each other any time." 

It was the most exquisite manner of 



getting over a preliminary awkwardness 
that I had ever known. I took the sacred 
washing-book, which trembled in my 
hands. I could hardly say a word or 
read a line. If I had not afterward, 
during a more intimate relation with the 




THE DISCOVERER OF THE FORD. 



writer, got hold of the copy again, my 
reader would have but a lame account 
.of the origin of the 

" FRANKEN-FURTH. 

" My poor mamma, who was a perfect 
toper at novel-reading, found this ac- 
count in one of her romances. She toid 
it me once, and suggested that if I ever 
had occasion to bank at Frankfort-on- 
the-Main (her own credits were always 
on Paris and Geneva), I might recall the 
story, which was pretty in itself, and 
might lend a new interest to the birth- 
place of those dear Rothschilds. I have 
been at Frankfort three or four times, 
and of course I forgot all about poor 
mamma and her old stories. Just now 
M. Fortnoye told me the very same rig- 
marole, with all sorts of French flourishes. 
Strange if I did not remember it, coming 
from him ! 

"It was a handsome young lad in 
trunk-hose and in the eighth century : 
he was only a shoemaker, but, like 
George Barnwell, or Eugene Aram or 
somebody in Bulwer's writings, his soul 
was above his profession. Having prom- 
ised his blond lady-love that he would 
catch her a nightingale, he had come 
down at daybreak to the banks of the 
Main River with an abundance of bird- 
lime, of glue, and perhaps of shoemaker's 
wax. 

"Opposite to him stretched the great 



Hercynian Forest, which formerly was 
sixty days' journey across (am I not 
good to remember this out of my Caesar's 
Commentaries ?). Hidden behind a rock, 
the youth whistled and piped, imitating 
the notes of the birds whom he hoped to 
attract. To his chagrin, not a song-bird 
greeted the rising sun. But directly, as 
the morning-star vanished in the light 
of dawn, a frightful cloud swept tem- 
pestuously over the forest. He analyzed 
the storm : it was a storm of eagles. At 
the same time a throng of living crea- 
tures emerged from the woods and ran 
distractedly up and down the brink. He 
synthesized the throng : it was a barn- 
yardful of neat cattle. 

" Does and hares — the cows and sheep 
of the wilderness — were in fact herding 
on the farther shore of the Main. From 
the birds of prey in the sky, from the 
timid quadrupeds on the earth, ascended 
a coarse discord of bleating and bark- 
ing. The boy grasped his nets, and fled 
with a hasty prayer to Odin : he had 
been converted but three years before to 
the faith of Rome, and must be pardon- 
ed if, in a moment of such perplexity, 
he forgot whether he was orthodox or 
heterodox. 

"Arrived at the nearest hilltop, the 
youth's terror, which was strong, suc- 
cumbed to his curiosity, which was 
stronger. He hid himself and watched. 
The extraordinary menagerie still roam- 



i88 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



ed the river-bank, 
hesitating and dis- 
tracted, now dashing 
back again into the 
thickets, now emerg- 
ing to try once more 
the watery barrier 
which restrained 
them. 

"The race of ante- 
lopes has been pre- 
served on the earth 
on account of its su- 
periority in powers of 
flight. This elite of 
cowardice was not un- 
known in the eighth 
century. The youth- 
ful spy saw a doe, 
guided by a keener 
fear than the rest, 
advance desperately 
into the water. ' Well 
done, pretty fool ! 
You illustrate the sur- 
vival of the fittest,' 
£ a i d this primitive 
Darwinian as the 
young deer, with 
frightened eyes and 
distended nostrils, 
stepped across the 
torrent, selecting a 
fordable passage in 
its extremity. The 
animal did not swim, 
but walked, and thus 
earned the honor of 
discovering a ford in 
the Main River. 

"The path was 
quickly put to a more 
important use. From 
the hilltop where he 
crouched the little 
cobbler now saw a 
throng of figures, he- 
roic and hideous, 
emerge from the 
Hercynian shades : they too paused at 
the brink, but, guided by the fawn, they 
strode tumultuously through the water, 
grim and bloody, carrying their wound- 
ed in their arms or on rough litters, and 




CHARLEMAGNE IN RETREAT. 



still clothed with the wolf-skins and bear- 
skins which they had assumed over- 
night with the laudable intention of 
frightening the enemy by their ugliness. 
I do not believe that the Franks were 



THE NEW HYPERION 



189 




" FRANKEN-FURTH. 



yet celebrated either for toilettes or man- 
ners. For the traversing army was the 
Frankish force, conquered overnight by 
the combined Saxons and Danes; and 
the general at their head was Charle- 
magne, generaled himself this time by a 
frightened doe. 

'" Franken-furth !' said the grim lead- 
er, baptizing the shore, and thrusting his 
lance deep into the bank. And Frank- 
fort is the name which the spot still keeps 
since the day when Charlemagne built a 
fortress around his spear as it stuck in 
the mud. 

"The growth of a settlement about the 
fortress was rapid. Before the young 
bird-snarer and the blond beauty had 
named their second baby it was a city fit 
for them to live in. A cage hung always 
at the door as a sign of the shoemaker's 
abode, in which cage a starling sung per- 
petually ' I can't get out ' a thousand years 
before Sterne ; and Hans of the Starling, 
as he was called, became a noble in the 
land, the shoe being a sign of distinction 
at a time when most gentleman went 
without. 

"Thus have I built in a night the city 



of Charlemagne upon my page, like to 
the mediaeval monk, who constructed on 
the margin of his parchment a capital 
of his own device, with wondrous archi- 
tecture and inhabitants in brilliant robes. 
When the clasps of his book were open- 
ed, like the turning of city gates, the 
populace awaked and stared at the read- 
er with wide-open eyes : when they were 
shut, the figures all went to sleep and. 
dreamed." 

"You retain your poetic fancy, dear 
lady, and the habit of giving it vent in 
writing," I said, as I returned the manu- 
script, only half perused. 

"Yes, it is my safety-valve," said Mrs. 
Ashburleigh. (How original her images 
were!) " Besides, the practice influenced 
the most important event of my youth — 
it almost procured me my husband." 

"Do confide in me, dear madam," I 
exclaimed, deeply touched by this sur- 
prising confidence. "Are we not old ac- 
quaintance ? Tell me all about it." 

Mary Ashburleigh smiled. Talk of a 
chin with a dimple in it ! There were a 
dozen in hers at the very least, develop- 
ing themselves every time she playfully 



190 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



bridled her neck : in each dimple, for 
me, Love, in all decorum, sat playing. 

"Generals don't usually expatiate on 
their false moves," she said, "and my 
marriage was not what is usually regard- 
ed as a success. But I am a woman of 
the world, and you are grown up, Mr. 
Flemming, or ought to be. That episode, 
after all, was a short one. The docu- 
ment I refer to was a little essay in one 
of my old albums : it pictured the life 
of a painter from the North when he 
came to bask and bathe in the art of 
Italy." 

" I know it by heart," I exclaimed, in- 
terrupting her : " I have committed it to 
memory this quarter of a century. It 
begins, ' I often reflect with delight upon 
the young artist' — " 

"There, that will do," said my glori- 
ous companion: "you must have filched 
it from my sketch-book. Whatever the 
merit of the little jeu cT esprit, it was a 
study from a living model." 

" Foolish Paul Flemming that I was," 
I broke in, "to think that a girl of twenty 
could write thus without a reason!" 

"I will not tell you much, lest I should 
set you off sentimentalizing. Oblige me 
by fanning me a little with your Gali- 
gnani as I talk to you. You must im- 
agine, then, a young English gentleman- 
out-of-livery, perfectly gloomy and gen- 
teel, who had gone as cicerone for us 
into Italy. He had been dismissed for 
years and years, you know, when I saw 
him sketching in the Vatican. Suppose I 
found out afterward that he had taken a 
situation in one of those picture-factories 
where saints and altar-pieces are made 
for exhibition with stencils, pounce-bags 
and such things. No matter. I became 
interested in him, poor fellow ! getting up 
at daybreak to work in the art-galleries. 
I wrote out his portrait, as I imagined it, 
in my album. He sent me a copy of a 
new poem, one that I had never seen, 
by young Tennyson : it was all about 
the maiden and the traveling lord dis- 
guised as a landscape-painter. At the 
head of this copy of verses was drawn a 
darling little illustration, with his own 
portrait in the part of the Lord of Bur- 
leigh. Of course then I knew that he 



was a nobleman in disguise, and that 
love of me had brought him to Italy with 
us. My mother had trained me to high 




THE FATE OF HANNIBAL. 



aspirations, but somehow I never im- 
parted to Mrs. Ashburton my faith in 
Arthur's lofty birth, contenting myself 
with an impassioned correspondence un- 
til mamma's death, when we married. 
My husband's parentage, however, was 
not noble, his father being an innkeeper 
— a man from whom all his family had 
been obliged to flee on account of his 
shocking habits. My husband, with the 
pecuniary assistance I gave him, em- 
barked in the spirit-trade — But why 
do I tell you this ? Arthur was a kind 
and devoted husband, except sometimes 
when he had dined very heartily, on 
which occasions I was obliged to have 
recourse to great firmness with him. 
But all that is in the past, and I have 
become perfectly accustomed to my veu- 
vage, certainly the lightest and most in- 
dependent state in the world. If my 
darlings had only lived !" 

" Dear madam ! Your children are 
then lost to you ?" 

" Yes, four of them, poor dears ! and 
laid to rest in different kingdoms. Han- 
nibal, the first, who was born while we 
were crossing the Alps, was the bright- 
est, and the only one who lived to be 
five years old. Poor love ! he was so 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



191 




THE JUDENGASSE, FRANKFORT. 

logical ! Having swallowed a lead-pen- 
cil, and being afraid to confess, he fan- 
cied that he ought to chew large quan- 
tities of India-rubber to obliterate the 
effects : the dear child was seized with 
cramps in the stomach before my eyes, 
as he played in the garden, a week 
after he had begun with that deleterious 
gum. He sleeps under a caoutchouc 
tree at Nice. Waterloo lies in Belgium, 
where he was born ; so does another 
nameless little love ; Lucia was born 
and died at sea, at two years' interval, 
and we carried her to Glasgow, where 
the spirit-trade is very good." 

Mary Ashburleigh fell into a reverie. 
It was a privilege to see the plumed 
eyelids descend and sweep her cheek. 
The curved corners of her ripe mouth 
sank a little, carrying with them the faint 
moustache — down brushed from the wing 
of Night! — which goes with that style 
of beauty. Her breathing became more 
pronounced and rhythmic, and slightly 



stertorous. The book, which I had 
returned, fell from her hand. I had 
a hundred things to ask her, but I 
could not but respect an introversion 
so profound. 

We had neared Frankfort when, 
after a long wool-gathering medita- 
tion on my part, I found the dark 
eyes of my companion fixed on me. 
"Mr. Flemming," she said, "I un- 
derstand that your affairs call you 
urgently to Paris, but I should be 
sorry to part before we shall have 
renewed our acquaintance fairly. 
Can you not spare two or three hours 
in the morning ? I am acquainted 
with Frankfort, and should like you 
to employ me as cicerone." 

I hastened to say that, notwith- 
standing the implacable importunity 
of my affairs, I should be happy to 
wait on her next day. For the life 
of me I could not summon courage 
to propose my companionship be- 
yond that period, and in fact con- 
sidered her speech a dismissal. "At 
what hour shall I bring the car- 
riage ?" I asked humbly. 

"At nine. It is the number of the 
Muses, I believe." 
This brilliant and elevated allusion 
captivated me afresh. I got little good 
of my pillow that night, and with early 
dawn I was out in the street. I went to 
the post-office, where a letter from Fort - 
noye was arranged to be sent me, and 
idly knocked at the closed doors as if 
there was any possibility of their un- 
closing for me at such an hour. I thread- 
ed the city. The Zeil, the finest street in 
Frankfort, showed me right and left a 
double range of magnificent buildings, 
giving me the most exalted idea of the 
old Free Cities of Germany. Over my 
head I had a magnificent emperor, in- 
tended for Charlemagne or Ludwig of 
Bavaria — I hardly know which, but as- 
suredly unlike either. Tiring soon of 
these sculptural splendors, I sought the 
street of the oppressed, the Jews' Street 
of Frankfort, the Ghetto, the Juden- 
gasse. 

At Frankfort there are genuine Jews 
and Christians, the polemists of the Met- 



i 9 : 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



chant of Venice — Christians who hate 
the Jews, and Jews who hate the Chris- 
tians. Only some forty years back the 
Judengasse was closed by iron gates at 
either end, with bars, locks and senti- 
nels. These precautions of the Chris- 
tians against the Jews were amply recip- 
rocated by the Jews against the Chris- 
tians, for every son of Jacob fortified 
himself in his mouldy old house like a 
besieged captain. Evening arrived, the 
Jews stole into their quarter, with a fine 
if behind the hour. The iron gates 
closed. Then the Hebrews, being barred 
into their quarter like lepers in a quaran- 
tine, revenged themselves by fastening 
up their castles like garrisons in a siege. 
Now the street is broader and better ven- 
tilated, but the histories of persecution, of 
hate, of revenge, are written legibly over 
the narrow houses : many of them are 
decrepit and tottering, like the owl- faced 
old women who stare furtively through 
the thick window-panes. The improve- 
ments in the Judengasse are due to the 
ambition, and in still greater part to the 
affection, of the brothers Rothschild. 
Gudula Rothschild, nee Schwapper, of 
the free city of Frankfort, and widow of 
honest Mayer Anselm Rothschild, was 
not to be bought off by any promises 
of splendor from the house — No. 153 — 
where her five sons and five daughters 
were born. Filthy and pestilential as it 
was, the Judengasse was the street of her 
preference. She never chose to visit any 
of the palaces built by her sons in Paris, 
London or Vienna. She never chose to 
get into a carriage, or to change in any 
wise her mysterious, Oriental rites of 
living. Unable to vanquish this hum- 
ble and tenacious resolve, and not even 
daring to touch the crumbling wooden 
relic where she lived with all her pieties, 
her sons gave her the only boon that 
she could not refuse to receive — air and 
space. They bought a part of the street 
and tore down the buildings which over- 
shadowed their mother's windows : thirty 
houses fell in this demolition, and enor- 
mous sums were spent to regale the old 
woman with a ray of sunshine. 

Uneasy and preocccupied as I was, I 
forced myself to remember the singular i 



foundation of the Rothschild fortunes. 
It is as honorable as it is curious. 

In the year 1795 the prince of Hesse- 
Cassel, forced to quit his dominions, and 
knowing of no one to whom he could 
well confide a sum of two millions, ask- 
ed counsel of a trusty friend. The ad- 
viser pointed out the most honest man 
he knew, a Hebrew with whom he had 
had certain transactions. The prince 
sent for the Jew and remitted the sum to 
him. The Jew asked whether the money 
was a deposit or a sum entrusted for 
speculation. The prince was in a hurry. 
" Do what you like with it," said he ; 
"only give me your receipt." On this 
the Hebrew shook his head, and begged 
the monarch to take back his money. 
"You may be captured or you may be 
killed," said this flatterer: "the receipt 
will be found on you, and I shall be 
persecuted." 

Without a receipt the Jew would an- 
swer for the safety of the money : receipt 
given, he answered for nothing. The 
prince looked in the Jew's honest face, 
and put the money in his hands without 
guarantee. 

The prince of Hesse-Cassel beat a re- 
treat with all the other princes his con- 
freres. At length, however, in 18 14, the 
treaty of Paris restored to each prince 
about the value of his former realm ; the 
earthquakes of empires, which had over- 
thrown so many thrones between 1795 
and 1 8 14, had ceased; the prince of 
Hesse-Cassel re-entered his capital. One 
morning a Jew was announced. " If the 
Jews have any petition, let them apply 
to the ministers." His haughtiness did 
not affect the Hebrew in the least. His 
message was to the prince, and only the 
prince would he address. The Hebrew 
was introduced. 

It was the Jew of 1795 : it was the 
same coat, a little more threadbare ; the 
same face, a little thinner; the same 
hair, a little grayer ; the same beard, a 
little more white and long. "Ah, brave 
man," said His Highness, "it is you ! I 
hardly expected that we should meet 
again. And what have you come to tell 
me ? Has my money been discovered 
and stolen ? It is a pity, but what mav 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



*93 



not happen in a score of years ? I am 
not very poor, and I can afford to bid 
good-bye to my two millions." 

"It is not so," said the son of Abra- 
ham, bowing at every word. "Thanks 
to the God of Israel, Your Highness's 
money is not stolen. But Your High- 
ness allowed me to speculate." 

"Ah, I see," said the prince: "you 
have speculated so cleverly that my 
money is at the bottom of the sea. 
Well, well, these unhappy times have 
been bad for commerce." ■ 

" It is not that, Your Highness. The 
two millions are not sunk." 

" How ?" cried the prince. " You have 
brought my two millions back ?" 

" It is not that. I have not brought 
two millions : I have brought six. The 
money has bred." 

"So much the better. But how do 
you propose to divide ?" 

" I reserve my commission of six per 
cent. ; but that is not computed in the six 
millions. It would take too long to tell 
Your Highness all the little speculations, 
but they are explained in the accounts. 
Will Your Highness be pleased to look ?" 

"And you think I will take all that 
sum ? I will receive my two millions, 
but I give you the rest. I do not spec- 
ulate — I am a prince. If you say an- 
other word I will not take a florin." 

" Ah, Your Highness, there are laws, 
13 



even for the poor Jews : I will force you 
to do it." 

"What! to receive six where I gave 
but two ? By all Olympus, you are ex- 
acting !" 

"No," answered the Jew, after reflect- 
ing a moment — " no, I can't force Your 
Highness, since you might deny that 
you ever authorized me to speculate. 
There is no agreement." 

"Just so, there is no agreement. I 
never gave you authority to cultivate 
the two millions, and if you say, another 
word I will prosecute you for violation 
of trust." 

"There is no faith left in the world," 
said the Jew between his teeth. 

"What are you saying there?" de- 
manded the prince. 

" Nothing, Your Highness. I say that 
you are a great lord and that I am a poor 
Jew. There are your two millions in 
good notes on the treasury of Vienna. 
As for the other four millions, since you 
positively refuse them" (the Hebrew 
sighed), "it is evident that I must take 
care of them." 

And the Jew, who was Mayer Anselm 
von Rothschild, returned into Frankfort, 
carrying back the four millions, and un- 
derstanding nothing of what this faith- 
less world was coming to. 






V^ls 




^pissSIs 


m^^W^^^ 


/^w 


Ww ** ilMh^vir^ 










^ fJwKlfl 




, 'Win 


\ \ W^NSi 


IS3 



FJtJZZ/T ZIY. 



AN AGREEABLE DUET AT FRANKFORT. 




AN ARYAN SUN-MYTH." 



FINE old generous spendthrifts, those 
Hessian princes !" I said to Mrs. 
Ashburleigh at the breakfast - table. I 
had arranged the story as neatly as I 
194 



could, and presented it to her all round- 
ed and compact, as an equivalent for 
her " Franken-furth :" then, continuing, 
"This is the proper spot," I observed, 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



r 95 



"for the greatest of modern fortunes to 
take its rise ; for Frankfort was the last 
Protestant city to relinquish the odious 
mediaeval custom of persecuting the Jews, 




THE RESURRECTION-BELL. 

and it is a proper compensation when 
Frankfort creates a Jewish plutocracy 
through the magnanimity of its prince." 

"Yes," she said, "I certainly like bet- 
ter to picture to myself the prince cram- 
ming a Jew's hand full of banknotes than 
Schinderhannes insulting the Jews' feet. 
You remember the incident ? Ke met a 
band of Hebrews while he was engaged 
in putting to fire and sword the valley 
of the Nahe : he made them take off 
their shoes, which he mixed irrecover- 
ably, and then stood laughing while they 
shod themselves precipitately at his com- 
mand, and limped away in each other's 
shoes to get out of shot from his pistol. 
Their gait must have resembled that of 
some of Mrs. Browning's verses. But 
were the old Hessian princes really so 
generous ? Did they not spend on their 
pleasures the money they got by selling 
their subjects as soldiers to any govern- 
ment that had a war to make — an Ameri- 
can Revolution to suppress, for instance ?" 

"The transaction with Rothschild hap- 
pened after the independence of America. 
As for a mercenary soldiery, the stain of 
it attaches no more to those little patri- 



archal German despotisms than to the 
freest of nations and the grandest of 
men. Othello, now, was a renegade, an 
artless hireling, whose sympathies ought 
to have been with the Otto- 
mites he undertook to con- 
quer for pay." 

"No doubt; and this art- 
less condottiere, if I remem- 
ber right, caused the death 
of his wife, his father-in-law 
and his lieutenant, stabbed 
his ancient and made away 
with himself." 

"True ; but those methods 
of family correction were no 
reproach to him politically. 
His broils and battles, com- 
pletely mercenary as they had 
been, were the admiration of 
the Venetian senator, you no- 
tice, and procured him a mar- 
riage of ducal rank. In re- 
cent times no nation has so 
largely engaged in the sale 
of soldiers as the model of 
my native republic — heroic Switzerland. 
Thorwaldsen's lion at Lucerne commem- 
orates a few such poor Swiss idiots, who, 
being republicans, died because they 
thought they ought to keep republican- 
ism out of the Tuileries. They were as 
much slaves to a routine and a fallacy 
as was Mayer Rothschild the First when 
he used to be chained in like a dog to 
his Ghetto at nightfall. How incredible, 
by the by, that this detestable bigotry 
should have been in force here within 
the lifetime of you and me !" 

" Horrid ! Then you have a contempt 
for the Swiss ?" 

" I ? No : I adore them." 
"Oh!" 

" Dearest Mrs. Ashburleigh," I ex- 
claimed, " I have the most violent taste 
for the Swiss. For a quarter of a cen- 
tury I have never seen a white, Alpine- 
looking cloud without asking, Does not 
Tell walk with Washington, Hyperion- 
like, on high ? That was one of the 
finest phrases of my youth, dear madam, 
and I have never tired of repeating it. 
No, my friend, I have not lost my in- 
fatuation with heroes. For me, Wash- 



196 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



ington still grandly flutters in the clouds 
and the stars and the stripes. Franklin, 
whose home at Passy I may be said to 
occupy, still teaches me, with admirable 
astuteness, that a man's first business is 
to save his country — his next, to leave it 
and live in Paris. Arnold von Winkel- 
ried leaps upon a point, Curtius leaps 
into a gulf — the one finding heroism in 
the form of a prominence, the other in 
that of a concavity : both are sweet to 
me. Those three fourteenth-century men 
of Rutli, Walther Fiirst, Melchthal and 
Stauffacher, assure me that moonlight 
conjurations by a lake are as patriotic 
as they are operatic. Tell convinces me 
of the absurdity of worshiping a bon- 
net — " 

"That is a lesson you would not al- 
ways find it easy to teach me if you had 
me in Paris." 

This archness conquered me afresh, 
and I had to close the subject: "I only 
desire the chance to try. As for Tell, 
you know he is really an Aryan sun- 
myth." 

" Perhaps so, but Swiss heroism is not 
a myth : I shall never believe it while I 
can see a pair of peasants, in Lyons vel- 
vet tunics, embrace each other on the 
borders of a lake by the light of a vacil- 
lating moon, in the opera. But you 
spoke of Thorwaldsen's monument to 
the Swiss guards. Do you know there 
are fine works of Thorwaldsen's here ?" 

I confessed my ignorance. 

"You must see them before you go. 
By the way, do you propose a long stay 
in Frankfort?" 

I yearned to tell her that, as I should 
never have come but for her, so I would 
never go but at her side. I stammered 
that I believed I had visited everything 
worth seeing except the works of art she 
mentioned. "In fact, the Judengasse, 
as the last stronghold of Christianity 
un-Christianized, or Jewing of the Jews, 
seems to me the significant thing to see 
in Frankfort, and this I have seen." 

"But you have seen nothing, then, ab- 
solutely nothing," she said, laughing de- 
liriously at my shortcomings. "My guid- 
ance will be absolutely necessary to you." 

I longed to accept, but I protested. I 



could not bear to trouble her, I said po- 
litely. 

" You must not think of going until I 
have conducted you around the city," 
she insisted. " Listen to reason, dear 
Mr. Flemming. The taskwork laid on 




frimj 



THE GKJZZLY HEAD. 

you by Monsieur Fortnoye — quite against 
my wish, it is true, but not the less wor- 
thy of my sincerest gratitude and friend- 
ship — is discharged. I have but an 
hour's journey, to make from Frankfort, 
and I can make it in broad day; so I 
feel brave enough to dismiss my escort. 
It is now my turn to greet you as a free 
man, and propose my own services. Get 
a carriage." 

Obedience was rapture. Mrs. Ashbur- 
leigh presented herself quickly at the 
porte-cochere, a little basket in her hand. 
" I will first show you my pet spot. — To 
the old graveyard," she continued to the 
driver, raising her deep contralto, so that 
it rang quite hollow under the arch of 
the porte-cochere and made the young 
coachman jump a little way from his 
seat. 

"Two hours will suffice," she remark- 
ed, "and I will deliver you up again in 
time to take the train from Frankfort to 
Heidelberg, as I myself take that from 
Frankfort to Mayence." 

I could not imagine why she led me 
to the cemetery, which was quite out of 
town, and my inquietude on this subject 
interfered with my conversation. I sat 
meditative. Presently, however, I re- 
marked, "Doubtless it is the tomb of 
some relative that brings you to this old 
graveyard, and indeed to Frankfort. I 
cannot get over my surprise at meeting 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



197 



you here. I have fancied you in Italy 
always. In making this rencontre at 
such an unexpected time and in such a 
place, I am reminded of Petrarch's re- 
proaches to Charles IV. for resting so 
short a time in Rome : ' What would the 




Caesars say if they met you descending 
the farther side of the Alps, hanging 
your noble head and turning your back 
upon Italy ?' " 

" My residence among the Italians was 
not very long," she replied, "and I have 
lived in England and other places. My 



attraction to the old cemetery of Frank- 
fort is simply artistic curiosity. It is 
there we shall find the works of Thor- 
waldsen. For Thorwaldsen, doubtless, 
you are willing to take a fifteen minutes' 
journey, are you not ?" 
I bowed. 

"Besides, he is an Amer- 
ican, of the most ancient 
lineage possible. He is the 
descendant of Snome, who 
was born somewhere in New 
England as early as the year 
1007, son of the viking 
Thorfinne Karlsefne and his 
wife Gudrid. The historical 
band of Northmen who went 
to America in that year car- 
ried back their protege, the 
Yankee Snome, of whose 
descendants was Thorwald- 
sen : the Historical Society 
of Rhode Island elected him 
honorary member in 1838 
on this account, though you 
will hardly believe me. So 
much for Thorwaldsen as 
an American, if that attri- 
bute is a necessary conduc- 
tor of your interest. But you 
must not be surprised at my 
choosing a churchyard as the 
point of departure for our 
discussion. There is noth- 
ing in God's Acre to dis- 
please either you, Paul 
Flemming, as I should fan- 
cy, or myself. Images of 
death have trodden on the 
heels of the most cherished 
thoughts of happiness for all 
who are as old as you and I. 
I know it is so with me. Let 
me confess it to you: the 
object of the journey I un- 
dertake this afternoon is a 
marriage -union that Heav- 
en will bless, I trust and hope ; and yet, 
still, the motive which attracts me with 
no less power toward the country whith- 
er I am going is a cemetery." 

She bowed her head to think, looking 
at once monumental and Rubensesque, 
while I shrank back appalled to solve 



9 8 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



this enigma. A journey undertaken for 
a marriage ! Whose marriage ? . Her 
own ? I had seen her yesterday on the 
arm of Fortnoye. Suppose for a mo- 
ment that my suspicions of that ubiqui- 
tous personage had fallen short of their 
proper aim, and that the real object of 
his nomadic career was to rob me of my 
first love — to make me now the widower 
of her who had never been my wife ! 
The mere conception and formulation 
of such an indictment against Fortnoye 
confused me. After all, I knew nothing. 
In sheer self-defence I put away the no- 
tion, and approached the sculptures with 
a partially-cleared mind. 

The monument of Philip Bethmann 
Holweg at Frankfort exhibits a series of 
bas-reliefs in which Thorwaldsen has cel- 
ebrated an act of courage which touch- 
ed upon three cities in its effects and 
doom. The young Holweg had extin- 
guished a conflagration at Vienna, died 
from his injuries at Florence, and been 
brought home to Frankfort for burial. 
In the principal design he is represented 
as expiring and handing his civic crown 
of valor to a brother — the brother who 
vainly nursed him in Italy : the Genius of 
Death already leans upon his shoulder, 
with the stupefying poppies in his hand. 
Beside, the mother and sisters are weep- 
ing ; and in another compartment, near 
the river Arno and the Lion of Florence, 
is Nemesis — that fatal Nemesis which 
follows good actions as well as*bad. 

" It is characteristic, composite and 
eclectic," said Mrs. Ashburleigh with 
conviction, seating herself upon a neigh- 
boring tomb. The criticisms of this lady 
were always inimitable. She looked long 
at the monument, producing from her 
light basket a delicate contribution of re- 
freshments, which we consumed as we 
gazed upon this elevating work. There 
were some little tarts, some slices of an 
admirable sausage, pumpernickel and a 
bottle of orgeat. 

"I must jot down the main outlines/' 
she observed. "I have in my sketch- 
books nearly four hundred designs of 
tombstones. That is my minor mania. 
I have a grand mania, which I will tell 
you of in a moment. I hope you foster a 



mania, Mr. Flemming. I should like to 
obtain squeezes of some of Thorwald- 
sen's details, but there will hardly be 
time. Have you a mania ?" she asked, 
suddenly, calmly, imperiously, and with 
a penetrating melancholy. As she sat 
looking at me from her tomb, with the 
ruins of the lunch-basket, which she had 
accidentally crushed, just embossed be- 
neath her paniers, she reminded me of 
Rachel sitting upon her teraphim, and 
I thought that ancient Rama itself had 
hardly seen a figure more superb, more 
mournful and more completely childless. 

" I believe I have what you mean by 
the term, though Hohenfels calls it my 
lubies. It is geographical in its nature, 
and is the hope of my life." 

" It is worthless. The progress of Art, 
upon which the higher welfare of the 
race depends, is not assisted by discover- 
ing the North-west Passage or the source 
of the Nile. My own collections are in- 
timately associated with the arts and 
pieties. I collect wall-paper." 

"Wall-paper! Mercy on me! So 
does old Mere Eulalie the ragpicker." 

"So she may, and I would not discour- 
age the germs of fancy and aesthetics 
among the lower orders. My own series 
of wall-papers will soon be the most 
complete in existence except that of a 
certain baroness in Munich, who is going 
blind, and whose taste, besides, is taking 
the direction of spiders. Other connois- 
sieurs may easily exceed me in faience, 
though I have a considerable cabinet of 
that. In lacquer, in Hindoo idols, in 
playbills, in beetles, in snuff-boxes, in 
etchings and postage-stamps, in Venice 
glass, in lace, or in empty relic-holders 
out of the monasteries, I do not com- 
pete ; but I have distanced them com- 
pletely in wall-papers, and, I am pretty 
sure, in tombstones. 

" My portfolios, which are as large as 
window-shutters, fill three enormous cof- 
fers. You may see in them the designs 
of Louis XVI. — a balustrade and a cip- 
pus, a balustrade and a cippus, ad in- 
finitum : a later pattern represents the 
king borne up by figures of Minerva and 
Fame, the upper part of his figure con- 
cealed by the repetition of the group, so 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



199 



as to dissemble the loss of his head — a 
constant succession of headless kings 
intended to go on thus up to the ceiling: 



it is a protest against his decapitation. 
There are the patterns of the Directory, 
with their narrow garlands of drapery, 




THE VISITORS BOOK. 



intercrossing and pendent. There are 
the griffins and rosettes of the First Em- 
pire. There are the ' aurora ' - colored 
papers of 1820, manufactured by Reveil- 
lon, accompanied by their velvet borders. 
There is the pattern of 1800, mentioned 
by About as probably unique, represent- 
ing green roses on a yellow ground. 
There are the heroic designs in the style 
of David, in one tint — Andromache hold- 
ing her boy, whose round cheeks are 
modeled with concentric circles of gray 
shadow. I have them all : it is a whole 
history." 

"Dear me!" said I : "perhaps I could 
assist you. I remember an old garret in 
America papered with the New York 
Mirror, on which indigo stars have been 
stamped with a potato." 

"If you could get me a square yard of 
it I should be eternally obliged. Nothing 
consoles the ills of life like a mania." 

The sexton interrupted us : Would we 
like to see the Chamber of the Dead ? 

I shivered at this peculiar invitation. 
My lovely guide laughed at my fears : 
"It is one of the sights of Frankfort, and 
Murray will not forgive you unless you 
visit it. Besides, let me tell you, it is 
quite comfortable, homelike and hos- 
pitable. In winter they keep up a fire. 
Let me quote the good old guide-book : 
: The Chamber of the Dead is arranged 



to prevent the danger of premature bur- 
ial in cases of epilepsy and the like. It 
is a building composed often small cells, 
grouped around the office inhabited by a 
watchman. The dead are left in their 
burial-cases, but each of the ten fingers 
is placed in a sort of copper thimble, 
from which proceeds a wire communi- 
cating with a bell. The least movement 
rings the bell and attracts the guardian.' 
Come and see this strange utilization of 
thimbles." 

I could but admire the comfortable 
smile with which she invited me to this 
awful sight. Mrs. Ashburleigh's nerves 
must have been indeed strong. Does 
one smile in entering such a ghastly 
morgue, where ten lifeless bodies, pro- 
tected by one hundred copper thimbles, 
are awaiting the chance of stirring the 
bell-rope which summons them to a new 
lease of life ? 

The cells were empty, all but one, 
whose closed door was the only suggest- 
ive thing in the place. The watchman 
sat in the middle smoking a pipe and 
making a wreath of immortelles. 

" How often are you aroused by the 
signal of this terrible bell ?" I asked. 

"Up to the present time, sir, I have 
never heard it." 

" Indeed ! Perhaps you have but re- 
cently taken charge here ?" 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



" In forty years, sir, the bell has never 
been rung but once." 

"Ah ! once, at least !" 

" Yes, sir : a bat had got in." 

And Mary Ashburleigh smiled once 
more as we left the dreadful place. We 
drove back into the city. On passing 
the post I saw my man Charles, who was 
staring vacantly at the city sights, and 
whom I sent in with my card to ask for 
letters. One from Fortnoye awaited me : 

"All has gone well at Heidelberg. 
Kranich is quiet, but apparently backing 
for a spring. He has asked after you, 
and without blushing. I am convinced 
that all the apparent malice of this cool 
young hand proceeds from calculation. 
If he could do you an injury he would, 
but I know how to prevent him. I will 
only add a word of thanks for your act 
of chivalry, so brusquely demanded and 
so obligingly performed. By your deed 
of courtesy, apparently so trifling, you 
have assured success to the most im- 
portant action of my life." 

This kindly message enraged me. 
"The most important action of his life!" 
Set this against the "wedding-journey" 
confessed by his magnificent companion ! 
Their harmony of intentions was a drop 
of gall in my chalice. I could not con- 
ceal from myself that the match seemed 
eligible. Here were two hymeneal fig- 
ures largely sculptured, with that breadth 
of style and simplicity of feature only 
found in Europe — without the tortured 
nerves and petty weaknesses so common 
in my own country, and of which I, un- 
fortunately, showed a fatuous example. 
Where the American character seems 
cut up with anxious details and sensi- 
tive perceptions, the European character 
often seems stamped in one piece with 
a die. These two ample natures might 
pass a life of harmony and calm — she 
collecting her wall-papers from city to 
city, and he irrigating Europe with his 
wines. Either of them knew the world 
a thousand times better than I did. My 
interest in Mrs. Ashburleigh increased 
most poignantly as this root of jealousy 
began to pierce through my being. 

I lost myself in a labyrinth of specu- 
lation. Mrs. Ashburleigh had not con- 



cealed her vast regard for Fortnoye, to 
assist whom, she declared, as Francine 
had declared in answer to a similar de- 
mand of mine, she would throw herself 
into the flames. This formidable fellow, 
then, had the secret of outmanoeuvring 
all the men and charming all the women ! 
Poor Francine ! what was her part in the 
whole mystery? The part, maybe, of a 
sacrificed rival ! She had been carried 




THE SUMMONS. 



off from Carlsruhe by a mysterious sum- 
mons : perhaps, with the illogical con- 
clusions of young girls, she had allowed 
some less worthy suitor to bear her away 
from her dreams of Fortnoye. This 
other — could it possibly be the repulsive 
young calculating-machine who called 
himself Kraaniff or Kranich ? That 
would explain his quarrel with Fortnoye 
perhaps ; but I had seen him at Heidel- 
berg, apparently alone. In any case, 
poor Francine ! And poor Flemming ! 

Under so lovely a surveillance I was 
guided till I was giddy. Dismissing the 
carriage, Mrs, Ashburleigh took me to 
the Staedel Museum, to the Bethmann 
Museum, to the Exchange. With her 
taste to aid me, I bought on the Zeil 
enough Bohemian glass to have furnish- 
ed the basket of Cogia Hassan. The 
great caryatides (so common in the ho- 
tel-architecture of Frankfort) glared and 
grinned at me in a hundred bronze or 
marble grimaces as I panted along with 
my pockets full of toys, or with my hands 
oppressed under the bouquets and bon- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



20I 



bons which she sweetly allowed me to 
purchase : scores of Vulcans and Atlases, 
leaning their enormous shoulders against 
the balconies, beheld me toiling without 




^^ W J£> \ 

THE SAGE AND THE SHADOW. 

compassion or offers of assistance. At 
last my companion herself, taking pity 
on me, showed me how to have my 
treasures packed by the aid of a com- 
missionnaire, and forwarded to my 
bankers at Paris. 

"The bouquets are more personal," 
she said: "they cannot be despatched 
to a banker." 

This charming sentiment, marked with 
all the amiable and considerate traits of 
this incomparable woman, melted my 
soul within me, and compensated a mil- 
lion times for the slight menaces of her- 
nia and dislocation which assaulted my 
arms and the pit of my stomach. It 
was as a bower of bloom, an ambulant 
arbor or a processional Guy Fawkes, that 
I presented myself at the Kaisersaal with 
my adorable commander. 

A public square with fine mediaeval 
buildings, and with a couple of foun- 
tains, fronts the grand old triple-gabled 
hall. One of these fountains has a fig- 
ure meant for Justice ; only, as the scales 
are placed in its left hand, it is more 
commonly taken for Injustice. 'Twas 
in this square that the emperors were 
proclaimed — 'twas in the hall that they 
were elected. 

From 911 to 1556 — that is to say, from 



Conrad to Ferdinand I. — the elections 
were had at Aix-la-Chapelle. Maximil- 
ian II. began in 1564 the series of em- 
perors crowned at Frankfort. The cere- 
mony at Aix I will not 
presume to explain, since 
the reader has a vivid if 
rather loose idea of it all 
from Ernani. Idle to go 
over again that immense 
Fourth Act, toward the 
close of which the king 
of Bohemia and the duke 
of Bavaria (in red baize 
with Canton- flannel 
facings) bring in a superb 
crown of bullion and 
pasteboard to the new 
emperor, who has been 
sitting in the tomb of 
Charlemagne like a ghoul. 
The ceremony as re- 
moved to Frankfort 
appears to have been not a whit less 
dramatic. The hall, it seems, was by this 
time called the Romer, its usual appel- 
lation at present : the Italian merchants 
coming up from Lombardy and install- 
ing themselves in the Saal had caused 
it to take a Latinized designation. These 
mercers and money-changers had made 
niches around the walls to the number 
of forty-five, for the purpose of display- 
ing their wares. The unknown archi- 
tect who distributed those niches proved 
to be a better prophet than Nostradamus. 
Thus it was : # in decorating the place for 
the imperial elections the forty-five niches 
were assigned to hold portraits of the 
emperors. Thirty-six had been elected 
at Aix. Their busts were introduced : 
an old woman said, "When the niches 
are all filled the German empire will 
be at an end." In 1765, when Joseph 
II. mounted the throne, he looked with 
apprehension at the fatal range of niches, 
for only one more place was left vacant 
for himself, and there was none for a 
successor. When Francis II. was elect- 
ed the round of the hall had been made. 
There was a grand discussion raised as 
to the proper place for the new emperor's 
effigy, when, in 1806, Napoleon shatter- 
ed the empire with the cannons of Wa- 



202 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



gram, and the courtiers were relieved of 
their difficulty. 

But I was about to give a word to the 
electoral ceremony, comparing it with 
Ernanu 

"You will fancy, dear madam," I said 
to Mrs. Ashburleigh, "the square here 
filled with a privileged crowd, among 
whom the big butchers and carvers have 
attained the best places by main strength. 
In the middle an ox roasts entire. One of 
yonder jets is replaced by a fountain of 
red and white wine, flowing respectively 
from the two heads of an enormous eagle. 
On another side is a mass of oats heaped 
three feet high. Near the hall is an urn 
of gold and silver money. The crowd 
waits with impatience the moment when 
the judges — the electoral archbishops of 
Mayence, Treves and Cologne, the rep- 
resentatives of Bohemia, Bavaria, Saxony 
and the rest — have announced the re- 
sult, and the emperor appears, crowned, 
at the middle window. Then a trumpet 
sounds, and the arch-marshal forces his 
horse into the pile of oats up to the 
saddle-girth, fills a silver measure with 
the grain and gives it to the emperor — a 
sign that the stables are provisioned. 
And the arch-cupbearer, also on horse- 
back, fills two silver cups at the eagle- 
fountain, and hands the red and white 
wassail to the emperor in token that his 
cellar is replete. It is now the people's 
turn, and when the arch-treasurer scat- 
ters abroad handfuls of the money, and 
the arch-steward flings out great slabs 
of beef, it is who can grasp the most, 
and who can win in the fight the ox's 
head, to be hung in the butchers' hall 
for a perpetual trophy." 

"The lucky ones must have looked 
somewhat as you do at this moment un- 
der your burdens." 

"A good omen ! I accept the person- 
ation, and am ready to shout a million 
loyal vzvas,'but it will be at the election 
of an empress, not an emperor." 

On that we entered. Our application 
to see the Kaisersaal resulted in pro- 
ducing a shrill voice and a grizzly head, 
the latter looking out from an opening 
upon us as if we were contemptible enig- 
mas, hardly worth to this CEdipus the 



trouble of a guess. The voice, which 
was a very high one. I really supposed to 




THE FAMILIAR. 



belong to this bearded head, until I per- 
ceived that the mouth was hermetically 
sealed with a thick clay pipe. " I am mere- 
ly hunting for the key," said the voice, 
still appearing to come supernaturally 
from the sealed-up hermit. Presently a 
figure emerged — the figure of a female, a 
blowsed beauty, who was tying her apron 
and running pins into her hair, and who, 
I am convinced, had been occupied rather 
with research of coquetry than of keys. 
We penetrated a door inscribed "Kaiser- 
saal " in great capital letters, and devoted 
ourselves with much concentration to the 
range of portraits, desiring to leave this 
lady a fair chance to arrange her hair- 
pins according to whatever preconceived 
ideal she may have had. We ran the 
Caesars down, from Conrad to Francis 
II., that fortunate father-in-law of Napo- 
leon who died simply emperor of Aus- 
tria by his adopted son's doing. 

Our examination was done, though, 
before the janitress's toilet. Several un- 
mated hooks remained to her dress, and 
I think several pins in her mouth, when 
at last she said, "Madam has doubtless 
seen finer halls, but she knows that a 
plain book sometimes has held great 
thoughts." 

"True," said Mrs. Ashburleigh. "I 
hardly know where else one could be in 
a chamber with forty-five emperors." 

"To see the archives, that is fine," add- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



203 



ed the woman. "They will show you the 
Golden Bull." 

"The golden bull ! Is it carved by the 
arch-steward?" I asked absently. I was 
wondering if this janitress, who only per- 
formed a toilet in the presence of visitors, 
•was anxious to get back to her den merely 
to unpin herself. 

Our little pecuniary acknowledgment 
to this guardian went into her mouth, 
mingling with the bodkins there collect- 
ed. Six kreutzers more admitted us to 
the archives, and among them we exam- 
ined the bulla of gold, named from the 
foil with which they cover the seal to 
preserve it from decay. This bull was 
given by Charles IV. in 1556, and be- 
came the fundamental law of the em- 
pire. For near three hundred years the 
great charter, written on forty-five skins 
of parchment, and beginning with the 
solemn words, Omne regnum in se di- 
vision desolabitur, was the bulwark of 
imperial power. Napoleon one fine 
morning gave the city of Frankfort to 
the Prince Charles of Dalberg, under 
whom it became simply the capital of the 
grand duchy ; the act of the Congress of 
Vienna in 1815 made Frankfort the seat 
of the Diet of the Germanic Confedera- 
tion ; finally, the other day, Bismarck 
swept the Golden Bull, with the Iron 
Crown and many other baubles, into the 
old portmanteau with which he has sent 
his master out carpet-bagging (as we 
Americans say) over the ingredient prov- 
inces of his great domain. The bulla 
was only shown to us through a glass 
sash, but the attendant had the gallantry 
to offer to my companion a neat engrav- 
ing of the seal, underneath which was a 
note addressed rather to me than to her, 
perhaps, as it was upon me that it acted 
in the way of a fiscal aperient. The note 
was expressed thus : " 12 kreutzers." 

We came away from the Romer. " It 
affects me strangely," said Mrs. Ashbur- 
leigh. The remark was both subtle and 
touching — touching, in that she should 
have cared for all the dead emperors ; 
and subtle, in that her emotion was 
" strange," a word chosen well to express 
the profound depth and distance of feel- 
ing with which we contemplate that long 



Augustan succession. We sought out 
Goethe's house ; and here it was my 
turn to be touched, for I found in the 
old visitors' book my own name. 

My reader may be a battered stager, 
callous to most of the emotions, but I 
defy him to forbid his heart to speak 
softly forth when he finds his name on 
some ancient tourists' register. Old 
schemes, old routes of pleasure, old 
friendships that were meant to be per- 
petual and are now dead enough, — how 
they start into the memory at sight of 
one's own pert autograph relieving itself 
there on the page, just as spirited as in 
that day when the hand was so lively 
and the foot so firm ! 

"You have, then, visited Frankfort 
before, Mr. Flemming?" said my com- 
panion. 

"Yes, and so I have visited many other 
places in the New World and the Old. 
But it was before I had met you ; and, 
in the words of Laertes, both the worlds 
I give to negligence, counting nothing 
noteworthy or remarkable that I do not 
behold by your side." 

The house is in the Hirsch Graben, 
No. 74. Visitors are expected to enter 
and contemplate the modest chamber 
where, on the 28th of August, 1749, the 
little Wolfgang first saw daylight. We 
found out the house, and stood before 
the portal, where a page of white marble 
gives the fact and the date. 

" I used to please myself by making 
out Goethe to be like our own Franklin," 
I observed — "a kind of rhymed Ben 
Franklin : many of his little maxims 
seem nothing more than versifications 
of Bonhomme Richard. His practical 
tendency and love of science were the 
same: in 1799, at the age of forty, he 
published his Meta?norfihoses of Plants, 
a work on which Auguste de Saint-Hi- 
laire founded his Vegetable Morphology." 

"Was that a specimen of your literary 
criticism when you were young ?" asked 
Mrs. Ashburleigh, royally indifferent to 
Goethe's correspondence with Franklin. 
" I suppose you were a botanist even 
then. For my part, I have a strong ob- 
jection to Goethe. It is not only for his 
views on love and friendship, which every 



204 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



woman is bound to find detestable from 
mere esprit de corps, but for another 
reason. I have always thought it con- 
temptible in him to aid tradition in vili- 
fying Faust, while he drew such vast 
profit from Faust's invention, and taxed 
it so heavily." 

" But Faust — Faust is moral disease : 
Faust was specially tempted of the devil," 
I suggested. 

"Not so," she said simply. "Every 
one has that personage at his shoulder 
if he will but turn his head." 

I looked askance at this strange wo- 
man, to surprise in its flight her Socratic 
aphorism, so naturally and forcibly utter- 
ed : it was not one of her great mots, 
with their burden of poetry and senti- 
ment, but its honesty gave it value. So, 
then, Faust, with his dark career, was 
but the terrible commonplace of human- 
kind — of humankind, whether man or 
woman ; and even our little Marguerites, 
pleasing themselves in the company of 
the men of wit, are a kind of Faust, 
signing away their souls because they 
love intellectual distinction ; and Herr 
Wolfgang Goethe himself, coining as it 
were the heats and generosities of his 
heart into hard type, he is a Faust of 
more unpleasant aspect than any. 

So do I interpret the chance axiom 
which Mrs. Ashburleigh, out of the 
wealth of her experience and her intel- 
lectuality, sowed upon me like seed by 
the wayside. We left the house of 
Goethe. As we emerged from the door 
a little ragged dwarf, who leaned like 
Asmodeus on a crutch, sprang up as if 
from the ground, and offered to translate 
the inscription of the entablature. " I 
know five languages, and therefore am 
as good as five men," he said, in fair 
English. 

"You are somewhat less than one," 
I answered. 

" There was a man !" said the dwarf, 
indicating the name of Goethe. "Those 
are the family arms of the Goethes," he 
continued, pointing with his crutch to 
three little lyres sculptured in the frame- 
work of the door. 

" I imagined as much," I observed 




ORIGIN OF THE LYRE. 



coolly, not caring to accept the friend- 
ship of this chance interpreter. But it 
was not easy to abash him : he looked 
up at us with the sparkling points of two 
deep-set black eyes, haunched his shoul- 
ders like an oracular raven and contin- 
ued : "Beware of the official guides and 
ciceroni ! Beware of Murray and Bae- 
deker ! The idiots of Frankfort will tell 
you how Goethe's father, impressed with 
some miraculous foreknowledge that a 
great poet was to be born, adopted 
those three lyres for the family arms. 
Don't you believe a word of it. Grand- 
father Goethe had been a horse-farrier. 
He got rich and built this house. In 
gratitude to the trade which had aug- 
mented his comforts, he adopted three 
horseshoes for emblems. The father of 
Wolfgang, who was the blacksmith's 
grandson, was a lawyer. When he made 
an ambitious marriage with the daugh- 
ter of Senator Textor, and brought the 
bride into his house, where the three 
horseshoes humbly swung from the lin- 
tel, he was seized with shame for those 
signs of plebeian origin. So he strung 
them with cords and they became harps. 
That was the way in which the poet's 
lyres had their origin at a time when the 
poet was but indistinctly dreamed of. 
There is the truth, sir, and a good joke 
it is." 

And Asmodeus, shouldering himself 
away on his crutch, disappeared with 
sulphurous laughter. But not before he 
had deigned to accept two or three 
chance kreutzers. 




ZPJ^ZR/T ZXZAT. 



EN ROUTE AGAIN 




"sorrows of werther. 



"IT fills me with strange thoughts, this 
-L bidding adieu to Frankfort. I re- 
call, dear madam, my previous exit from 
the same city. I was a boy then, and I 
was with a young friend, Hohenfels. I 
recollect how we sat in the theatre after 
they had put out the lights, among the 
empty stalls and in the smoky twilight. 
We wanted to destroy the illusion, you 
know : boys can afford to destroy illu- 
sions, because they have a vast provision 
of them remaining to draw upon in the 
future, and so they are pitiless toward 
their own card-castles. And then we 
got up and shook off the dust of Frank- 



fort, and trudged on through Hochheim 
to the Rhine, and so to Schlangenbad 
and Langenschwalbach. Did you ever 
hear of the Stella, Mrs. Ashburleigh ? 
The Stella was doing cachucas in the 
Frankfort theatre then. The lightest 
heel you ever saw. Stella might have 
said, like Beatrice, ' There was a star 
danced, and under that I was born.' 
We two lads sat in the pit, recovering 
from our illusions and enjoying some 
raisins and filberts ; and then in the 
darkness we heard Stella's husband say- 
ing, just as if he had spoken of a horse, 
' I shall run her six nights at Munich, 

205 



206 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



and then take her on to Vienna.' We 
were greatly shocked, and I suppose felt 
complacent in being shocked ; for we 
knew we were a pair of fine sentimental 
fellows." 

" I think I remember Stella and Ana- 
tole," said Mrs. Ashburleigh. "Stella 




DANNECKER S ARIADNE. 



was as thin as a fiddle ; and Anatole, 
who was her grandfather and very re- 
spectable, once danced his wreath off, 
with the hair it encircled." 

" How little it takes to satisfy youth !" 
I pursued. " I know I thought Stella as 
beautiful as a bird, but it was before I 
met you at Interlaken." 

The image of the theatrical goddess 
rose up for one moment beside the sub- 
lime actuality of the Dark Ladye who 
was deposited monumentally on a camp- 
stool. The triumph of the rich reality 
pleased me : for a single instant I just 
fancied the peerless Mrs. Ashburleigh 
curved across the footlights and raising 
her toe toward the boxes in the slow and 
measured style they practice in ballets. 
Her superiority was crushing : excelling 
as she did all women in everything, I 
need not say how instantaneously she 
finished the Stella. The poor chalky 
wraith of that performer sank beneath 
the weight of contrast like a stucco 
pedestal under a marble angel. Truly 
I had not, when I called Stella fair, en- 



countered the peerless realism of British 
beauty. 

" I have not danced, I think, since the 
death of Vestris," said my commander 
simply, and motioning for my field-glass 
with one imperial fore finger. 

But where was this tagrag of conversa- 
tion uttered ? And why, if we 
were still at the sign of The Ro- 
man Emperor, was Mrs. Ashbur- 
leigh put upon so unusual a piece 
of hotel-furniture as a camp-stool ? 
And why did I hand her the field- 
glass ? And why did I recall a 
previous exit from Frankfort ? 
From that city our paths were to 
lie far apart: she was going to 
Mayence, and I was returning to- 
ward Marly. Yet behold us still 
together, and evidently no long- 
er amid the street-scenes or bal- 
cony-caryatides of Frankfort. 

No. Frankfort is left behind, 
and I am on my route again. It 
is a naval edifice on whose un- 
stable seats I am jotting down 
my notes. This fine river is 
broader than the Main. I am 
clear of Frankfort, and did the Fates en- 
courage me I might go homeward. But 
here I am, pushing perversely forward 
instead of back, urged by another move 
on that chessboard of destiny which has 
already found me at many advancing 
posts of a fatal game — at Strasburg and 
Carlsruhe and Baden-Baden and Hei- 
delberg. 

I recalled to Mrs. Ashburleigh a pre- 
vious exit from Frankfort. Let me re- 
call this last to myself. 

We left the house of Goethe, and the 
crippled Asmodeus slunk away with his 
stick as if he were vanishing into the 
ground. 

"Goethe fatigues me," said Mrs. Ash- 
burleigh. " His Werthers and Fausts 
are out of date : they hang on his shoul- 
ders like that eternal coat with the long 
skirts which we see in every window on 
the statuettes of Goethe. People may 
object to the modern spasmodic schools 
and their passions in tatters : passions in 
tatters are bad enough, but they are not 
so bad as passions from the ready-made 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



207 



clothing-shops — things that did not fit in 
the first place, and are long since old- 
fashioned." 

It was perhaps a little tyrannical, for 
she had made me buy the statuette whose 
protracted garments she was now using 
for her satire ; but woman's tyranny is in 
proportion to her loveliness. I agreed 
instantly with all she said, and quoted 
Titmarsh's lines to the effect that Char- 
lotte "was a married lady" whose pas- 
sions were in the nature of bread and 
butter : 

So he sighed and pined and ogled. 

And his passion boiled and bubbled, 
Till he blew his silly brains out, 

And no more was by it troubled. 
Charlotte, having seen his body 

Borne before her on a shutter, 
Like a well-conducted person 

Went on cutting bread and butter. 

Yet I could not help wondering if her 
feelings had not changed a little. In the 
old days by the Staubbach, when I stole 
from her album the stories about stu- 
dents and painters, would she have rel- 
ished a sarcastic allusion to Werther ? 
Fatigued with this psychological inquiry, 
I had recourse to a bit of the pumper- 
nickel and sausage which remained in 
brown paper at the bottom of my pocket. 
I offered some to her, and she accept- 
ed it simply, spreading her bread and 
sausage with that large tranquillity that 
goes with great natures. Charlotte was 
eclipsed. So we brought up at the Beth- 
mann Museum. 

It is there that we find the Ariadne of 
Dannecker. I did not forget how I had 
once greeted the sculptor in his old age, 
in his room at Stuttgart, where he used 
to pass hours in looking at engravings 
after Canova's statuary. Canova, too, is 
out of fashion at present, and perhaps 
Dannecker also ; and indeed I do not 
know how many of my boyish idols have 
not been laid flat or corroded by the 
purism of the modern critics, the Neo- 
Grec revival of the Second Empire, and 
the aesthetics of ugliness taught by Eng- 
lish pre-Raphaelites. But, at any rate, 
Dannecker was another of the good genii 
of my youth — one who had met me kind- 
ly and bidden me good - speed on my 
pilgrimage. He had praised my Flan- 



ders cognomen, reminding me that Paul 
Flemming was one of the old Minne- 
singers ; and I made in return one of 




VENUS OF MILO. 



my best compliments, telling him thai 
his head, with hair flowing to the shoul- 
der and pale-blue eye, made him look 
like Franklin. Further than that I could 
not go as a connoisseur of heads or a 
connoisseur of Franklin. 

But on reviewing the Ariadne at Frank- 
fort in such company as it was permitted 
me to have, I hardly saw the technical 
merits of the work. I studied its symbol 
only. Immortal allegory of widowhood, 
eternal encouragement to second mar- 
riages, the myth of Ariadne in Naxos 
shines down through the centuries, cast- 
ing a silver gleam of poetry on the very 
statistics of divorce-courts, and cheering, 
as with wine, whatever modern marriage- 
tables may chance to be furnished with 
funeral bakemeats. And I was looking 
on this figure with one whose claims, 
both to beauty and bereavement, were 
undeniable ! 

The Ariadne of Dannecker reposes 
upon one of the symbolic panthers which 
Bacchus brought over after his conquest 
of India, and turns forward and upward 
a soft forehead, from whence the new 
hope has just chased every lingering 



208 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



shadow of desolation. Even so, it seem- 
ed to me, did Mrs. Ashburleigh, imper- 
fectly supported by the remains of the 
spirit-trade, turn a trustful front to the 




HERK CUYPKR S INCOMPLETED TASK. 

dawning future, and just hold a marble 
ear in a receptive posture for whatever 
promise might be in the wind from the 
wandering Hymen, 

whose usual trade is, 
Under pretence of taking air. 
To pick up sublunary ladies. 

I have ever rejected, as coarse and 
unworthy, the specious explanation that 
the original Ariadne of Crete was an au- 
gust but ill-advised princess who, after 
an unhappy love-affair, had rushed into 
habits of intoxication. Mary Ashbur- 
leigh, however, seemed to give some 
credit to this interpretation, or at least 
to have heard of it ; for she said : " Do 
you think the sculptor has disposed her 



in a horizontal posture to indicate that 
she is not able to stand ?" 

I was relieved from replying to this 
conjecture, which I thought able but un- 
likely, by the assistant's putting the 
machinery in motion. The statue 
of Ariadne is occasionally turned 
round on its pedestal under a col- 
umn of perpendicular light, which 
passes through a pink drapery, and 
gives to the revolving figure the hue 
and air of life. The pale nymph 
flushed, turned, looked slowly 
around, and softly guided her pan- 
ther away from our indiscreet gaze, 
while carnation hues and undulating 
reflections played fitfully over her 
soft limbs. And again Mrs. Ash- 
burleigh obliged me with one of her 
penetrating criticisms : "Just like the 
ballet, is it not ?" 

And indeed the exhibition is too 
theatrical. My guide continued, 
piqued perhaps by a little becoming 
sense of rivalry : "Was the Stella as 
pretty as this ?" 

"I don't think she was quite so 
stagey," I said. 

Near at hand was a cast of the 
beautiful puzzle found at Melos — 
the Venus, or Victory, or whatever 
divinity it may be, who, with the 
arms she lacks the possession of, 
has drawn all the world in admira- 
tion to her foot. 

" It has been restored at Naples as 
fondling a Cupid ; it has been re- 
stored at Paris as disarming Mars ; it 
has been restored at Brescia with wings, 
and made to write with a pencil on a 
shield. That armless figure," I said, 
" has set all the archaeologists to wrest- 
ling." 

" I would restore it as a Diana," said 
Mrs. Ashburleigh," and I would make 
her in the act of shooting an arrow at the 
entire race of impertinent young gentle- 
men. The Dianas, you are aware, know 
how to make themselves respected." 

"No, no," I said: "Diana is no such 
bitter enemy of a whole sex as you rep- 
resent her. I can give you an argument. 
You remember, in the same Louvre which 
enshrines yonder Venus is the Huntress 



THE NE W HYPERION. 



209 



Diana, the Diane a la Biche. Well, the 
biche, modest little doe as she runs at 
the side of her goddess, is there repre- 
sented with a pair of well - developed 
antlers — ornaments which in Nature be- 
long only to the male. The symbol of 
Diana is thus the harmonizing of the 
two sexes, not their enmity." 

"Since you are so analytical," said 
my commander, " I can tell you another 
of the public secrets of the Louvre. The 
Venus of Milo is not only separated at 
the waist, in the manner that has been 
discussed so widely, but the knot of hair 
is a separate piece of marble fastened on 
to her head. The Paris Venus is there- 
fore very appropriately the inventress of 
the false chignon." 

Rarely have I met so well-informed a 
critic. With a certain amount of tuition 
from her husband, joined to her taste for 
art and some taste for surgery, Mary 
Ashburleigh had become a matchless an- 
atomist. It was while examining the lit- 
tle plaster Goethe that she alarmed me 
by suddenly making me throw my head 
back, and dissecting with a sharp crayon 
my sterno - hyoid, omoplat - hyoid and 
thyro-hyoid muscles, with the digastric, 
mylo-hyoid, and all that was visible of the 
sterno-cleido-mastoid above the necktie. 

During this unusual tete-a-tete, "Un per- 
missible Fortnoye that you are," I cried 
to myself, "who would carry away so 
resplendent a creature ! It will be the 
very shame of shames if you attach for 
the second time to the wine-trade this 
divine Ariadne !" 

At the foot of Dannecker's statue she 
said suddenly, "And to think all this 
while a whole congress of dressmakers 
and hatters are awaiting me at Mayence ! 
These antique belles are so superior to 
the needs of costume that they make us 
quite forget. Draw your watch, Mr. 
Flemming, and tell me if I have time to 
get to the station." 

Instead of the hour, I told her the history 
of my repeater : she laughed musically, 
and we strolled to the Parade-ground. 

The time of separation was come. I 
was preparing to arrange a system of 
correspondence, which I proposed to 
make very warm on my part, sure that 



I could in that way introduce a course 
of ideas which I found it impossible to 
conduct among the interruptions and 
hourly impertinences of travel. I was 
murmuring a few words, and she was 
glancing at the windows, eager and pre- 
occupied. The porters from the hotel, 
marking their prey, gathered round us, 
and she and I were beating them off in 
two or three languages. I pressed my 
card upon her, with my hybernating ad- 
dress at Passy. 

"I shall have you there next winter?" 
I importuned. 

"je serais ravie /" said she. 

" Heaven forbid !" said I. 

I stared after her retreating form. She 
disappeared in the hall, and the crowded 
Parade-ground with its throngs appeared 
to me the very desolation of the earth. 

A figure from a shop close by attract- 
ed my notice by bouncing suddenly 
against me. It was my faithful assist- 
ant, Charles. He was admiring some- 
thing in his hand, to the exclusion of all 
other claimants of attention : the object, 
no doubt intended for Josephine the 
cook, was a ball of wax-fuse, wound 
upon itself like twine, and painted ex- 
ternally with a wreath of forget-me-nots. 

" Stupid !" said his employer. " Where 
are the trunks ? Have you forgotten 
them in that tallow-chandler's shop?" 

I had instructed him in the morning 
how to convey my trunks and botany- 
box, properly lettered and directed for 
the Frankfort-Heidelberg line. 

"Monsieur will not be alarmed," said 
Charles with several bows, which under 
the circumstances looked as though ad- 
dressed to the taper, still retained in his 
hand. "The baggages are safely at the 
railway. On my road I met the hotel-por- 
ter. He was wheeling off the trunk of 
the English lady in a large barrow, and, 
since monsieur is traveling with madam, 
I simply completed the load of the por- 
ter with the wardrobe of monsieur." 

"Triple cretin !" I exclaimed, with an 
ardent impulse to strangle my good and 
affectionate prodigy. "Charles," I al- 
most sobbed, "you have made me ap- 
pear like an intriguer, a pursuer, a bore, 
a sticking-plaster, and I don't know what 



2IO 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




CHARLES AS IDIOT. 



"Not at all. 



else, in the eyes of a most 
critical and intelligent 
lady. She will never be- 
lieve that I didn't tell you 
to lose those trunks at the 
wrong station. Run 
straight back and fetch 
them. No, stay! lean- 
not wait fuming here. I'll 
go with you." 

As we descended from 
our carriage at the depot, 
Mary Ashburleigh got 
out of hers: "What! you 
here, Mr. Flemming ?" 
' I said anxiously. "At 
least, it is only because you have got my 
clothes in your wheelbarrow." 

" I have your clothes ? What can you 
possibly mean ?" 

"Dear madam," said I, "allow me to 
explain. Charles is an idiot." 

" I can hardly see how his idiocy im- 
pels you to travel so much farther in my 
direction than you said." 

"Only hear and believe me, dearest 
madam, and I'll convince you that I am 
not going in your direction." 

" Oh ! then you 
are not going to 
Mayence ?" 

" By no means. 
Appearances are 
against me." 

"Whither do 
you go then, Mr. 
Flemming ?" 
-to Heidelberg, Stras- 
burg and Epernay." 

" I thought you had just been to those 
places." 

" That is true ; and I hope to see them 
again without loss of time. But Charles, 
by a blunder, has thrown me in a heap 
upon the tender mercies of your trunk." 
"My trunk!" said Mary Ashburleigh 
in sincere alarm. "There are four un- 
cut dresses in it. For the sake of old 
times, Paul Flemming, go and see if my 
trunk is marked for Castel." 

I investigated. The baggage, my own 
included, was on the train, marked by 
the hotel-porter for Castel, opposite May- 
ence : I could extricate nothing. 




THE TRUNKS. 



Where I said- 



"Then I am satisfied," said Mrs. Ash- 
burleigh. A great relenting and heavenly 
charity now took possession of this love- 
liest of women. She said: "Your bag- 
gage is imprisoned. You had better get 
into prison too." And she pointed to 
the railway-coach. 

In fact, I wondered that I had not de- 
termined to go home by way of Mayence 
and the choicest part of the Rhine, rath- 
er than by my old tiresome itinerary of 
errors. With my commander pointing 
that supreme fore finger of hers, to obey 
was to be happy. 

The divinity, once assured that she 
was not bankrupt with her dressmaker, 
ameliorated like a summer morning. 
And thus once again I traveled by her 
side : our talk was sculpture, books and 
anatomy. In renewing our relations I 
could but growl once more, "Unbearable 
Fortnoye !" 

In the course of an hour we arrived at 
Castel, where Mrs. Ashburleigh plunged 
into abstinence and retirement with her 
syndicate of dressmakers. It was a 
moral rather than a material separation 
which rose between us : physically, there 
was but the bridge between Castel and 
Mayence, in whose Hotel d'Angleterre 
I established myself, but morally there 
was the gulf of Dress. I could get noth- 
ing uttered, yet I was not repulsed. My 
most ardent speeches were extinguished 
with woolens and silks, yet I was allow- 
ed to communicate day by day, bearing 
in my pockets across the bridge a tele- 
graphy of buttons and sewing-silks — the 
Exchange quotations in those matters 
of the Castel and Mayence sides of the 
river. 

And so I lay that lovely May night — 
while Hohenfels was fighting my battles 
in Heidelberg — under the moon-painted 
Dom of Mayence, whose outlines are 
clotted by builders' materials amassed 
by Herr Architect Cuypers. 

Like the spire of my own life, which 
still shot ineffectually toward its Ely- 
sium when I last came hither, the cathe- 
dral of Mayence is a romance of the 
Middle Age — unfinished. 




fj^rt xrsn. 



EMBARKATION AND VOYAGE FROM MAYENCE. 




THE HORROKS OF HYMEN. 



HERE in Mayence, as in the city 
of Florence and in many a con- 
tinental town, I have meditated on the 
strange slow gestation of a cathedral. 
Begotten when faith was strong, or at 
least when bishops were lively and tem- 
porally powerful in their judicial seats, 
your cathedral starts on a grand scale, 
and sucks up a principality's wealth in 
the pores of its great hulking body : its 
career continues through nine or ten 
centuries of unachieved intentions, oddly 
marked off to the beholder's eye by dif- 
ferences in the architecture. Probably 
some features essential to the original 
plan, as the fleches of Notre Dame in 
Paris or the facade of the Duomo in 



Florence, never get put on, and the poor 
abortion heals up, as it were, in an atmo- 
sphere that affords no more germs of 
growth, and desolately persuades itself 
that it looks better without. The crown- 
ing satire is when a cathedral front is 
elegantly and languidly completed, as a 
matter of aesthetics, by a government en- 
gaged in persecuting the Church which 
founded it. 

I threaded the complicated interior of 
the Dom, where the episcopal monu- 
ments with their stone embroideries 
came back upon my sight like the tan- 
gled furniture of a dream. Long years 
before I had paced the same bowers 
and gardens of Gothic-work, but that 

211 



212 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



was in my previous existence, before I 
had seen the Dark Ladye. In youth 
what I had demanded of the turkey- 
cock beadle was the tomb of Meissen 
the Frauenlob, who lies here, where the 
ladies of Mayenc^ carried him, in his 




CHAPEL AT MAYENCE. 



tomb among the cloisters of St. Willigis. 
In maturity I sought the monument of 
Charlemagne's best-loved wife, Fastrada. 
Then, the young man's heart was wist- 
ful and curious, searching the future for 
the promised boon of love : now, the vet- 
eran's soul was crowded with undigest- 
ed experience, and demanded some im- 
age of satisfied affection to rest its emo- 
tions upon. 

The cathedral of Mayence, like some 
rich agglomerated crystal, consists of 
two or three churches grown together: 
this peculiarity gives it, instead of the 
single or double spire with which other 
churches are content, an opulent crown 



of towers, brimming over the lid-like 
roof and pushing from every corner up 
to heaven. The east choir and its en- 
trance are of the tenth century, erected 
under Bishop Hatto ; the west choir is 
of the twelfth ; the nave, of the eleventh ; 
and the chapels extending along the 
side-aisles are of the early part of the 
fourteenth century, or, as I should 
think from the style, as late as the 
sixteenth in some portions. 

Schwanthaler's monument to Frau- 
enlob, put up since my early pilgrim- 
age in the most spasmodic taste of 
German romanticism, might have at- 
tracted my attention if I had still been 
the vaguely-yearning troubadour : it 
is on the south wall, and represents 
a lady putting a wreath on a coffin. 
But, as I say, I was now bent on find- 
ing images of love crowned and test- 
ed by matrimony ; so I made my 
way, without any turkey-cock assist- 
ance, to where the tablet of Fastrada 
leans out from the wall, close to the 
"Beautiful Doorway." The st'one 
which witnesses the queen's virtues 
and Charlemagne's devotion bears a 
Latin inscription, beginning, " Fastra- 
dana pia Caroli conjunx vocitata." 
I made a sketch of it for Mrs. Ash- 
burleigh, still busied with her milli- 
ners ; and it was of Mrs. Ashburleigh 
I thought as I called upon the Carlo- 
vingian queen. 

If Kaiser Karl loved no woman 
like Fastrada, it was not that he had 
not with three previous alliances pur- 
sued the hope of conjugal happiness, 
and after being for the third time incon- 
solable taken this clever princess to wife 
Think of that, O widowed ringdove of 
my dreams ! and see if the fable of 
Ariadne be not here repeated with im- 
provements and appendices ! 

Fastrada was an astute princess. "Four 
affinities are enough for Charles," she 
observed : " a fifth would be ridiculous, 
and the idea disturbs me." Meantime, 
Carolus Magnus, disgracefully uxorious, 
spent all his time with the queen. The 
cabinet could get no sessions, the bish- 
op no tithes, the courtiers no audience. 
"We must have recourse to the doctor," 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



213 



said they ; and the doctor proved equal 
to the emergency. He came, prescribed 
and conquered. So Fastrada, when she 
felt herself about to die, concealed be- 
neath her tongue the magic ring, the 
gift of the serpent, which secured to her, 
so long as she wore it, her lord's affec- 
tion. The effect on Carolus was pecu- 
liar : he loved his wife even in the clay, 
and long after the poor thing had fallen 
to pieces he was found inseparable from 
her remains, caressing the bones and 
fondly winding the long hair around his 
fingers. These posthumous connubial- 
ities became embarrassing. Turpin, the 
archbishop of Rheims, and the courtiers, 
and the sexton, and the architect — who 
had received orders for a splendid tomb 
for Fastrada, but who could not bury Fas- 
trada while she was still enjoying the cov- 
erture and protection of her husband — 
all were scandalized. At length, Turpin, 
with some white fiction about a message 
straight from Heaven, contrived to be- 
guile the king away ; and then the queen- 
ly skeleton was removed, and the ring 
found fast between the teeth. The affec- 
tion, however, which Charlemagne had 
felt for Fastrada was transferred with 
magic promptness to the present holder 
of the talisman. This happened to be 
Bishop Turpin himself, who had thought 
no harm in slipping the bauble on his 
plump and white episcopal little finger. 
Charlemagne loved him with fulsome 
tenderness, overwhelming him with pres- 
ents of wimples, coifs, Mechlin lace and 
stomachers. The pious ecclesiastic was 
so persecuted by the imperial love that 
he gathered up his gown and took to 
his heels. Arrived at Aix, he threw the 
ring into the lake which surrounds the 
castle of Frankenstein. The monarch 
thenceforth, and to the end of his life, 
loved Aix-la-Chapelle as a man loves his 
wife, and determined to be buried there. 
This fantastic tale is better authenti- 
cated than many a plain one. Bishop 
Turpin himself is the chronicler of the 
fact, and Petrarch, when traveling in 
Germany, learned the history, and has 
repeated it. [Epistolcs familiares, lib. I., 
cap. iii.) As a persuasive toward re- 
peated matrimony I know no legend so 



wholesome as that of Fastrada and her 
amulet. I copied the tombstone for 
Mrs. Ashburleigh's collection, though 
my artistic hand was badly out, and 
many a year is in its grave since the 
drawing-master smiled upon my album. 
Inside the design — in that spirit of per- 
petual half-courtship which I had now 
established, and which my noble inam- 
orata seemed to permit — I wrote a sen- 
timent. It was an improvement upon 
poor old Fastrada's eulogy, and I wrote 
it not in Latin, but in good plain French. 
"Look not amerement" I said, "after 
the Past : he comes not again back. Go 
forth to meet voire futur without fear 
and with a trustful heart." 

Every day, as I trudged over to Castel 
with my little sheaves of entertainment 
or of wisdom, I poured out my diurnal 
riches at those adorable feet, which did 
not trample on my poor offerings. Once 
she even received me in a wrapper. My 
homage she took with a careless famil- 
iarity, never choosing to see the point ; 
and I, for my poor part, had no courage 
to risk our happy relations by an im- 
pertinence. Yet I wished that custom 
had permitted Mrs. Ashburleigh to man- 
ifest, by a kind of openness similar to 
that I used myself, the exact progress of 
her feelings day by day, instead of being, 
so constantly bland, sunny and absorb- 
ent. I wished it were leap-year — I even 
wished it were that fatal year of 1780 
which the men of Mayence still recall 
with terror. 

In the year 1780 — I have the story 
from a stout old gentleman of the hotel- 
table — an archbishop of Mayence, ex- 
ercising the vestiges of judicial power 
that had come down with his seat from 
the days of Charlemagne, decreed that 
every promise of marriage should be 
binding, on the simple declaration of the 
female. The good archbishop reckoned 
without his host. In a month after the 
edict the mayor of the city was dragged 
to the altar by a fair and relentless gov- 
erness, who, truly or not, made the prop- 
er declaration. The hapless mayor had 
evidently not had time to study the new 
law. From that day forth all the maids 
of Mayence — the portionless spinsters, 



214 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



the chits, the minxes, the old girls gone 
to seed, the large-nosed girls, the blue- 
spectacled girls, the clever little seam- 
stresses — descended into the arena and 
gave battle. It was terrible to see the 
gentle creatures, armed with incredible 
quantities of ribbon, velvet, flowers, lock- 
ets, gloves, gaiter-boots and other sedu- 
cers, engaged in set warfare with the 
male sex, and bent by all artifices on 
leading the enemy into ambush. A hunt 



Mephistopheles cursed the day when he 
provided the jewels, for here was retri- 
bution rising on every side, pale and 
implacable, before a thousand wretched 
Fausts : Marguerite was avenged. By 
an odd transition bashfulness and back- 
wardness passed from the ranks of girls 
to those of young men. In all the crowds 
of Mayence there were but two or three, 
awkward schoolmasters or discouraged 
bachelors, who did not curse the arch- 



or battue was organized against elder I bishop's law 




THE REVENGE OF MARGUERITE. 



sons and possessors of small vested com- 
petencies. Several honest citizens fell 
into the trap, and, nibbling at a rosebud 
or a dish of tea, gave the requisite prom- 
ise. The ladies of marriageable age lost 
all reserve and all mercy : with eyes 
closed and elbows rigid they plunged 
precipitately into those gulfs of coquetry 
from which the traditions of a thousand 
years had warned them. The men were 
panic-stricken. Boaz, fearing lest Ruth 
should glean his fields like the locust, 
set a sentry at his tent and covered his 
feet with goloshes before going to rest. 



It was suppressed, but 
not before most of 
the milliners and 
washerwomen had 
become bankrupt to 
the jewelers. In the 
fell purpose to be 
come irresistible 
they had gone insol- 
vent. So the mar- 
riage - law was re- 
placed by a law of 
abstinence in mat- 
ters of toilette, and 
the women of May- 
ence, except those 
of fixed income, 
wear a simple ker- 
chief over their yel- 
low braids. 

" I thank you for 
your story," I said to 
my table-companion 
apropos of all this: 
"it is for many ears 
a tale of warning, 
doubtless; but I 
know a man who 
only wishes that he 
could go from here and shout out bru- 
tally a promise of marriage over a fair 
hand that should be legally bound by 
the declaration." I sighed. The burgh- 
er stared and left the company, tapping 
his forehead. The band in the dinner- 
room breathed out serenades from Don 
Giovanni, and the boy's wistful sadness 
of 1 8 — throbbed back to me from horns 
of Elfland faintly blowing ; for I remem- 
ber the youthful days when those very in- 
struments at those very tables had soothed 
my soul-thirst — days when I could think 
of Love simply as an unwritten poem, 



= ±=^W~^^-£^ r &*' i ± 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



215 



while I listened at Mayence to dinner- 
table lectures from the smooth-forehead- 
ed gentleman on Jean Paul, the Only- 
One. 

That night, after I had crossed the 
swinging boat-bridge and poured my 
day's gossip and a few yards of lace into 
the lap of Mary Ashburleigh, I said, 
" The Mayence men are lucky on leap- 
years sometimes." 

"How so?" said the lady absently, 
counting the glass bugles on a belt she 
was embroidering. 

"Oh, they may be betrayed to their 
good." And I recounted the case of the 
inveigled gentlemen of 1780. In my 
little tale it was the parures and orna- 
ments of the feminine wooers that struck 
my listener. She raised up the belt — 
and a handsomer (and longer) bit of en- 
amel and needlework need not be seen 
— and said as she examined it, " So, in 
1780, women ruined themselves for dress 
and lay in wait for husbands in mas- 
querade ?" 

"After a manner, yes." 

"No doubt some of the men were 
equally good actors too, and made use 
of their fine figures or sported in bor- 
rowed titles before the rich widows or 
plain-faced heiresses of whom they want- 
ed to be the victims." 

" No doubt ; though that may be done 
outside of leap-year." 

" I am thinking of a legend of Frank- 
fort ; for you must allow me to go back 
for my illustrations to the place we last 
left, since you know I have only lived 
here like the lobster in the cave to which 
it goes to change its shell. I will tell 
you how a well-favored knave at Frank- 
fort got a noble partner at a ball." 

I placed myself at her feet on a stool, 
where she allowed me to string beads. 
She pursued the tale, weaving legend 



and embroidery together into the web 
of her fascination : 

"At the Romer or Kaisersaal there 
was a grand festival for the coronation 
of Ludwig of Bavaria. Among the en- 
tertainments graced by the presence of 
the court was a grand masked ball. 
The costumes were very rich, but the 
most noticeable among the splendid 
dresses was that of one stately man, who 
had had the natural good taste and sense 
of distinction to come in plainest black. 
He moved gracefully through the gaudy 
throng all in velvet, and resembling a 
shadow detached from a moonlight turf 
and planted upright. The young em- 
press remarked him, and was secretly- 
anxious to dance with him, so that when 
he knelt at her throne and requested th^ 
favor of a waltz, there was no difficulty 
about granting it. Moving in his skill- 
ful arms was such a luxury that the one 
waltz became four. Meantime, as the 
black mask threaded in a lordly manner 
the figures of the waltz, another mask 
approached the ear of the emperor and 
asked him if he knew who was dan- 
cing with Her Majesty. ' No,' answered 
Ludwig. ' It is some sovereign prince, 
doubtless.' — ' Not quite such a high rank 
as that,' said the incognito.—' He is some 
lord, then, some count or baron.' — ' Low- 
er than that,' said the mask. — ' Can he 
be a simple chevalier ?' — ' Come down 
still farther.' — 'Some bold equerry?' — 
4 Lower still.' — ' Can it be that the em- 
press would dance with a page ?' — ' You 
have not got it yet, sire.' — ' With a ser- 
vant, a hostler, a clown?' — 'Ask the 
man himself,' said the confidant in his 
most sinister tones. 

"'Who are you?' demanded the em- 
peror sternly of the graceful chevalier in 
black. — ' Sire,' said the unknown, ' I'm 
an author.' — ' That, at least, is an honest 




THE WORKS OF THE "AUTHOR IN BLACK. 



2l6 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




OBJECTS OF INTEREST IN THE RHINE. 



though beggarly employment,' said the 
emperor, ' and an author may be favor- 
ably known even to princes through his 
works.' — ' Alas, sire !' said the stranger, 
4 mine have all fallen dead ; yet there 
is a long list of them, enough to fill a 
church, and I contemplate the line of 
my works with pride — some in editions 
trochees, some in boards, but all distin- 
guished by the skillful suspension of the 
interest or the keen edge of the style.' 
The emperor took off the black mask, 
revealing the face of his hangman ! 
' Sire,' said the man, falling on his knees, 
' though you were to kill me you could 
not abrogate the fact that the empress 
has danced with me four times. Do a 
better trick, sire. Give me your cross 
and knight me. Then, if any one at- 
tacks your glory, I will defend you with 
the same sword by whose means I exe- 
cute your justice.' The emperor studied 
a minute and complied, the empress 
danced with the new knight for a fifth 
time, the Knave of Bergen became the 
last of nobles and the first of citizens, 
and still in ceremonial parades the exe- 
cutioner walks alone behind the peers 
and in front of the burghers. The orig- 
inal Knave of Bergen always kept the 
mask and the black velvet which had 
won him an imperial partner. 

" I find myself dwelling unduly on 
costumes, masquerades, disguises, man- 
traps — I know not what," proceeded Mrs. 
Ashburleigh. 



"And I on widows, Ariadnes, second 
marriages, Fastradas, fourth marriages, 
and leap-years," chimed in my own un- 
uttered thought. 

" I think I am unhinged by so much 
dressmaking," pursued my commander. 
"The idea of coming to a quiet little 
place like this where I could moult in 
secresy was good enough, from a strate- 
gic point of view, but it has affected my 
mind. To-morrow my things will be 
ready, and I shall proceed down the river. 
There will be a final trying-on, and you 
may come over and act as congregation, 
if you like. Then you may escort me 
over Mayence, which I have hardly seen ; 
and then, after putting me on the boat, 
you may bid me good-bye — if you like." 

I attended the trying-on. There was 
a little ecstatic German dressmaker, in 
a dress covered with ribbons, but made 
of a material so often dyed that its odors 
filled the room, and the expression of 
whose mouth was so altered by pins that 
she could never smile without dropping 
five or six of them. By this priestess 1 
was placed in a dark corner, and Mrs. 
Ashburleigh, in a high light, was allow- 
ed to revolve upon me. There was a 
dress in the mediaeval style, the skirt 
finished with embrasures and machico- 
lations around the edge, corner turrets 
at either shoulder, cheveaux - de - frise 
about the neck, and a hanging wallet 
like a beggar's scrip. I forget most of 
them, but there was one painted over 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



217 



with garlands which I believed in my 
heart was made of wall-paper. 

This exhibition, from which Mrs. Ash- 
burleigh every minute derived new beau- 
ties, new roses and new volume, lasted 
until dinner, instead of merely through 
the morning hours, as intended. The 
morrow had been fixed for her departure. 
However, we snatched a flying view of 
Mayence, and saw the fine shops, and 
the Platz with the Standbilder of Goethe 
and Schiller and Gutenberg. The Guten- 
berg interested us, from our previous 
studies of Thorwaldsen : the twelve-feet- 
high giant, modeled in 1835 at Rome 
from the Danish sculptor's sketches, was 
cast in bronze in Paris. Dumas, who 
professes to find the statue ugly, relates 
how he was to some extent responsible 
for its erection. 

He must reproach himself, he remarks, 
for having contributed his share to this 
bad business. When all the blandish- 
ments had been exhausted by which sub- 
scriptions are usually wrung from reluc- 
tant pockets, there was still a deficiency 
of eight thousand francs. The idea then 
occurred to give a benefit representation 
for the object, and the drama selected 
was Dumas's Kean, translated into Ger- 
man. This play, which Thackeray cov- 
ered with his ridicule, succeeded so well 
in Germany from the patriotism or play- 
loving character of the Mayenc.ais, that 
ten thousand francs were gained by the 
single representation. Walking after- 
ward at Mayence in the shadow of the 
monument, Dumas took shame to him- 



self for having been instrumental in its 
erection. For our own parts, though 
well enough content to find the figure 
of Gutenberg in his native city, we were 
scandalized to see no corresponding 
monuments to Faust and Schoeffer, and 
asked indignantly where were the priv- 
ileges of collaboration. 

In the antique part of the town, among 
the dark buildings around the Dom, 
Mary Ashburleigh succeeded in stripping 
away some quaint old patterns of wall- 
paper. Then we prepared to bid fare- 
well to das goldene Mainz. One last 
time I crossed the fluctuating bridge of 
boats as I went to deposit my companion 
in her resting-place at Castel. Return- 
ing to my hotel, I rested long on the 
swaying causeway. .The constellation 
of the Bear sank into the broad water 
as I looked over among the floating 
shoes and fish-baskets to 

where the Rhene 
Curves toward Mainz, a woody scene. 

No young lover ever drew deeper sighs 
than I as I thought of my Dark Ladye 
sleeping with satisfied heart among her 
new dresses. Next day I had the. honor 
of depositing (while Charles saw to the 
trunks) her satchels and shawls on the 
tables of the steamer bound for Co- 
logne ; and — I can hardly say how it 
was — my botany - box lay there also 
among them. 

The hardy navigator who trusts his 
vessel to the Rhine must think often of 
those who have floated on it before him. 
The current is full of voices, echoes from 




" SPIRITS TWAIN HAVE CROSSED WITH ME. 



218 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



poets who have been impressed as he 
is now impressed ; and he feels like the 
earlier Spanish sailors to America, who 




SALUTATIONS OF SIMROCK. 

peered through the sunsets of those dim 
golden seas for the Castilian flag, and 
ever hoped to catch on the spice-winds 
that shuddered with loneliness the echoes 
of the Spanish all-hail. Two literary 
sailors of the Rhine above all others have 
caught the ripple of its water upon their 
page and made it talk — Hugo, Dumas. 
As I boarded the steamer I said mental- 
ly to the gentleman at the ticket-office, 
"Take, O boatman! thrice thy fee : spir- 
its twain have crossed with me ;" imi- 
tating, as the reader knows, that song of 
Uhland's in which the thrifty bard pro- 
poses to acquit himself for a celestial 
revelation by paying triple fare. I have 
always found something deeply and com- 
fortably German in the notion of meet- 
ing the apparition of departing souls with 
an equivalent of twenty-five cents. 

But, Uhland apart, the world of ro- 
mance into which I am now floating has 
already been conquered by a Victor and 
an Alexander — a Hugo and a Dumas. 
There is little room for such as I to say 
anything. 

In the first place, I hear one author of 
the twain deliver himself of a kind of 
grand somnambulistic snore. It is he 
who contemplates the ocean, he who 
wrote The Cultivators of the Sea : 

"What a precipice the Past! Descent 
lugubrious ! Dante would hesitate at it. 
The Ego, the Hugo, does not. The Ni- 



agara flows from a Sea and falls into an 
Abyss. The Rhine flows from an Abyss 
and falls into a Flat. Paroxysmal para- 
dox. The Lurlei sings at Saint Goar, and 
the bugpiper plays the bugpipe at the 
First of Fourth. The 14th July delivered ; 
the 10th August thundered ; the 21st Sep- 
tember established. 1789,1793,1830. In 
1690 a child was abandoned on the rocks 
of Portland, in 1800 the rocks of Portland 
were broken into Portland cement, and 
in 1845 tne Portland Vase was cemented, 
after being broken by a young man 
named William Lloyd. John Brown, 
Montgolfier, ./Eschylus, Bug Jargal, Job. 
The facts appear, as connected with the 
Rhine, to the author, grave." 

It is very impressive, and perhaps that 
is the reason that we like Alexander Du- 
mas rather better. This jolly sailor does 
not know much about German history, 
but he can tell us a hundred facts about 
Rhine wine. His association with May- 
ence is of the tombstone in preparation 

for Lady S , pending the completion 

of which he meets Lord S and a 

friend rolling promiscuously up and 
down the river and tearfully drinking 
fourteen bottles a night "to the memory 
of that dear lady." He knows on what 
rock, sun - baked under the " Prussian 
blue," the grapes of Prince Metternich 
are culled. He chuckles over the fruit- 
ful jest of Jules Janin, who, when Metter- 
nich asked his autograph, wrote: "Re- 
ceived of the prince one dozen of Johan- 
nisberger" — a receipt which the noble- 
man was in honor bound to vindicate 
with a hamper of the coveted nectar. 
Metternich, as a great vintner, and per- 
haps for other reasons, interests him ; 
and he preserves the family legend — 
how, when the founder of the race, a 
simple bowman of the fifteenth century, 
held his ground alone against the foe, 
he was sent for by the emperor, and 
gave his name as Metter. The sovereign 
said, " My subjects retreated, but Metier, 
nicht : Metternicht shall he be called," 
and sealed the bargain by dubbing him 
a knight. Wherever Dumas goes, cheer 
and hospitality await him, and the land 
flows with Liebfrauenmilch and Ingel- 
heim. At Bonn (whence he journeyed 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



219 



southward to Mayence) he was received 
as a guest of honor by Herr Simrock, a 
brother of the poet Karl Simrock, but 
himself a hotel-keeper. Dumas and the 
Amphitryon greeted each other on equal 
literary ground — that is to say, respect- 
fully brushed the earth with their fore- 
locks ; and the novelist has particularly 
advertised the noble wines which Herr 
Simrock excavated for him from his own 
private cellar. He rewards the host's 
hospitality, notwithstanding, by an error, 
in forgetting the name of the house of 
which the poet's relative was proprie- 
tor, and calling it the Etoile d'Or. The 
Etoile d'Or has long been kept by one 
Joseph Schmitz — on principles of the 
strictest prose. The matter is a trifle, 
except as showing the overcoming effects 
of Rhenish wine upon the memory and 
intellect of a gifted writer. And, truly, 
Dumas seems to have seen the very col- 
or of the Rhine rubescent. Indeed, since 
Brennus first brought the vine into Gaul 
it can hardly have had a more ardent 



11k - •■> @a/ 



and corybantic priest than Dumas, who 

makes it a touchstone of virtue wherever 

he goes, estimates 

kings and princes 

according to their 

cellars, 

And labels with the bless- 
ed sign 

The shaggy heathens of "~2—— 

the Rhine. -^ — ~^— ' 

There are pas- the label. 

sages, too, in his 

hnpressions de Voyage where the red 
blood of the grape seems to have got 
into his pen, tinctured his style and giv- 
en a rich unction to his descriptive pow- 
ers. Apropos, accept this vivid little spot 
of color in which he paints the Rhine in 
its via mirabilis, its Appian Way, its 
Street of Wonders, marked with golden 
milestones of sunny castles — the famous 
distance from Mayence to Cologne : 

"Here, vanquished, enclosed and as 
if fettered by its mountains, thanks to 
the granite cuirass against which it in- 




THE PRETENTIOUS YET HOLLOW HERON. 



220 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



effectually throbs, it twists itself about, it 
rolls, it doubles on itself like a fighting 
serpent, and, in its conscious powerless-. 



ness, even while pressed to flight it men- 
aces in flying." 

But this gladiator aspect is not per- 




UMW 



FULL CROPS. 



ceived at once on leaving Mayence. 
Until Bingen it is comical-pastoral, scene 
individable and poem unlimited. The 
sleepy banks stretch ignobly forth, un- 
dulating into graceful hills on the right 
shore, while on the left they are tattered 
away into boggy islands that gurgle and 
choke with all their bulrushes in the lap- 
ping waters. These islets, whoever might 
be their proprietors, presented to my 
own and my companion's gaze no more 
amusing or edifying rent -payers than 
the herons, moping motionless and stiff 
like that which guarded the water-lily 
for poet Hood. The heron, I suppose, 
has the prescriptive right to stand senti- 
nel in front of mouldy castles, deserted 
Rhine-towers and haunted manors, but 
I find him, for my part, a very transpa- 
rent and contemptible character. He is 
evidently longing to be drawn, arsenick- 
ed and stuffed. He regards that con- 
summation as an alderman regards the 
glory of having his likeness painted ; 
and until it can be attained he bloats 
and poses all day in a ridiculous portrait- 
of-a-gentleman attitude, carefully imita- 
ting the stilted look of the preparation, 
and so glares at himself eternally in the 
water, a padded Narcissus. 

I was better pleased with the storks I 
had observed at Strasburg. Humanity ex- 
pects two didactic services from the stork : 
in the first place, to build in your chim- 
ney without being disturbed by pedantic 
theories of draught either on its own or 



your account; second, to carry its pa- 
rents pickaback. The sacred ibis of 
Strasburg does not appear to fail in these 
particulars. We have tasted so many 
smoked Strasburg pies that the civic 
chimneys must evidently be well stuffed 
up. As for the filial part, I saw, when 
rattling away from Kehl, groups of elder- 
ly, rheumatic, stoop - shouldered storks 
picking up worms for their young ; and 
evidently this assiduity would not have 
been practiced unless the stripling storks 
had been satisfactory in their part of the 
contract, and had been in the habit of 
loading on the old folks as luggage in 
most of their excursion-trains. And is 
there not a touching story of the stork at 
the time of the late German bombard- 
ment of Strasburg ? — how the birds, 
frightened at the din, resolved to leave 
the city, though it was long before the 
usual date of migration, and held a town- 
council on the eaves of the cathedral, 
where they talked and fluttered a huge 
while, and finally spread their white 
wings above the gunpowder-smoke and' 
sailed away ? In this intelligent move- 
ment Fancy cannot doubt but that the 
storks acted up to all the requirements 
of literary tradition : she perceives each 
ornithological hero taking his little one 
in his claws, getting the broad of his 
back well under the old Anchises, with 
instructions to hold on grimly yet with- 
out prejudice to respiration, and so fly- 
ing through the scorched sky from the 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



221 



flames of the Ilium. Only, as the re- 
treat was at night-time, the manner of 
it could not well be verified. 

Among the white villages which punc- 
tuate the flowing hills of the dexter 
bank we saw now and then a pretty- 
sight — geese, queenly waddlers, com- 
ing down to the river like creeping 
threads of waterfall, or cattle, or 
quaint row-boats. One exhibition, 
more in the style of Dumas, was 
pointed out to us by Charles, who, as 
usual, revenged himself for an un- 
merited scolding of mine by being 
uncommonly attentive. It is here- 
abouts that on the rocky hills some 
of the most famous wines are made. 
The soil retains the sun's warmth, 
and the grapes manage to extract 
from them a delicious juice. Near 
by are found the glorious vineyards 
of the Rudesheim, the Geisenheim, 
the Markobrunner, the Steinberg, 
the Johannisberg brands. In certain 
hamlets on the left bank, along by 
Ingelheim, the wine is made and the 
plants tended by women alone : the 
men drink the result, and are report- 
ed well content with this division of 
labor. Farther down, near Ander- 
nach, where the basaltic rocks are 
quite black and absorb a tropical 
heat from the sky, the vines grow in 
baskets of earth, which nestle over a 
hundred and fifty acres of the crag : an 
exquisite nectar proceeds from this gid- 
dy hanging-garden. 

The discovery I speak of on the part 
of Charles was announced in his own 
fashion by the abrupt cry : "Well, if I 
am ever believed again ! A blackbird 
cultivating wall-fruit !" 

And we saw a little white church at 
the edge of a sparkling village complete- 
ly encircled with a cornice of blooming 
vines. On a ladder against the wall, in 
the strongest possible relief, was the sil- 
houette of the sacristan, who was occu- 
pied in training the grapes. Snipping 
and peering, now crushing an insect, 
now decimating a faulty cluster of buds, 
now tying up his turbulent garlands with 
bulrushes from the river, and all the 
while ticklishly afraid of falling, he pre- 



sented a cheerful picture of bustling old- 
maid's labor. 

" He makes a good pendant to Dan- 
necker's Ariadne," I suggested ; and add- 







WORKING IN THE ECCLESIASTICAL VINEYARD. 



ed : "Let us hope those consecrated 
grapes all go to the altar's use, and never 
leak out into the profane wine-trade." 

A little shocked to have called the 
wine-trade profane in the hearing of Mrs. 
Ashburleigh, I settled her in her shawls 
and turned to promenade the deck for a 
few minutes. The scenery so far re- 
quired but slight attention, and I was 
not sorry. I paced the boat in a medi- 
tative, Napoleon-like attitude, somewhat 
surprised to find how difficult it was to 
fold my arms over my doubt-racked 
heart. The journey had evidently agreed 
with me, and I was getting better than 
ever. Ah me ! how easily I crossed these 
arms when first I journeyed up the Rhine 
in the youthful years that were for ever 
gone ! 

I could not but remember that the 
stretch of travel now before me was the 
same by which I had begun my earliest 



222 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



journey — the journey which had led me 
to Mary Ashburton and all the ashen 
orchards of Sodom. Behind was May- 




STABBED WITH THE COMPASSES 



ence, whose Walhalla-like table-d'hote 
of a forty- pound sirloin in a Mediter- 
ranean Sea of brewis I shall never for- 
get so long as I have a palate or gastric 
apparatus. Before me was Bingen, where 
in the White Horse tavern I had taken 
a slate roof and chimneys for ruins on 
the Rhine. Beyond that, Andernach, 
where I had emptied to my own health 
a bottle that looked like a church spire. 

And now, as I crossed the arms of 
melancholy over the waistcoat of well- 
being, I could but ask myself if I were 
the same Paul Flemming. And the river, 
reflecting my roseate gills, appeared real- 
ly to doubt the assumption. Was it wise 
for me to go telling again the stations by 
which I had marked in boyish years my 
Hyperion-like ecliptic over the earth ? 
Had I not abjured the Rhine, the en- 
chanted serpent-river whose wisdom and 
lore have power to charm all the charm- 
ers, and which had now tempted me into 
its coils once more ? It was a moment to 
review the past. Of all my loves, which 
remained to bless me ? Of all my friends, 
which was at my side ? 

"Mr. Flemming ! Mr. Flemming !" my 
commander appealed in a voice like a 
golden bell as I passed her on my beat, 
"you don't show me the ruins. Where 
are the ruins?" 

The ruins ! The ruins, Mrs. Ashbur- 
leigh, are here. If you want a Palmyra, 
if you wish for a Karnak, if you desire to 



be accommodated with a Herculaneum, 
here, in this heart, madam, is the lava 
and the desolation. And you, you too, 
are a sojourner and 
a pilgrim. Yet in 
this desert shall ever 
be an oasis, a spring, 
a softened shadow 
for you. Rest your 
regal form a while, 
tired queen, upon 
my granite ! 

She was resting it 
a little too trustfully 
on an artist's stool 
left inadvertently by 
a Swiss painter who 
had gone to sketch 
over the railing at 
the stern. As I picked up the fragments 
and assisted her to a stouter seat, " The 
ruins, madam, are coming," I said, "but 
for you and me they are obsolete. They 
begin with the Rheinstein yonder, which 
is not a ruin : it is a residence. Yon tow- 
ers are fitted up with stained glass and 
baubles, and the owner shows them like 
a kaleidoscope for a groschen or two. 
The rest are on their way to us, and you 
will soon have them importunate enough. 
The heights down yonder are much alike, 
and afford, in the first place, a brand of 
wine which connoisseur-travelers must be 
able to discriminate and talk about with 
supernal wisdom ; secondly, a girl who 
at some epoch has jumped into the river; 
and thirdly, a thief who built a strong- 
hold and stole from all the caravans that 
passed his side of the river. One of 
them, wiser in his generation, built his 
castle, the Pfalz, in the middle, and took 
his toll from both banks." 

"Drink, death and thieves !" said Mrs. 
Ashburleigh, estimating the charms of 
the Rhine. "But where, then, shall we 
find romance ? where is poetry ?" 

"Ah, madam, have you not heard the 
news? Poetry is dead, killed by rule 
and line." 

And I read to my commander the little 
poem testifying to the fact by that very 
Simrock whose brother was Dumas's host 
at Bonn. 

But Mrs. Ashburleigh, I thought, looked 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



223 



hurt at the brusque way in which her 
favorite Muses were treated. So I gave 
her another story, more appropriate to 
the place, and pretended to read 
from an old book in my hand 

THE TRUE RECORD OF LORLEI. 

In nomine Patris, el Filii, et 
Sfiirilus Sancti : Before me, Jo- 
han de Haga, ecclesiastical judge 
and grand penitentiary, commit- 
ted to this inquisition by my 
lords of the Chapter of Saint 
Ewald, in the presence of our 
lord Conrad of Hochsteden, 
archbishop, on the plaints and 
quarrels of many good and wor- 
shipful brothers of the Church, 
have been heard the ensuing 
testimonies as to the behaviors 
of a demon vehemently suspect- 
ed to have taken the form of a 
woman, at present in the gaol 
of the chapter. And to arrive at 
the verity of said quarrels and 
griefs have I opened this hearing, 
after mass duly performed, to 
this end to record the witness- 
ings of one and all as to the said 
demon ; the same to be thereupon put 
to the question and judged according to 
the laws provided against devils, wheth- 
er demon, incubus, succubus, undine, or 
warlock's familiar. In this inquest hath 
assisted me, that all may be written and 
established, Gulielmus Geestmund, rubri- 
cator of the chapter, a clerk skilled and 
learned. 

In the first place, hath come before 
us my lord the palsgrave of Bacharach, 
who, by me reverentially besought to en- 
lighten the religion of the Church, hath 
responded that he hath great willingness 
thereunto, and engageth his faith of loyal 
knight to say nothing but what he hath 
seen or believed. Hath thereupon de- 
clared that his eldest son, after his first 
sojourn and siege in the lands of infidels, 
had brought back in guise of bride-be- 
trothed a white wife of Venice, or female 
appearance thereunto resembling. That 
the young count had wellnigh immedi- 
ately departed for his second crusade, 
being so incited by two special and mov- 



ing reasons — first, because he would win 
fame and great dower for his lady, the 
said Venetian ; and second, because he, 




THE JUDGE OF THE COURT ECCLESIASTIC. 

the palsgrave now speaking, having en- 
gaged the hand of the young man to the 
dowager-widow of Rheinstein, had des- 
patched him about his affairs with much 
personal correction and with many sa- 
cred promises and oaths of further chas- 
tisement ; the which oaths, being meas- 
urably repeated in court, have not been 
recorded in these minutes by the rubri- 
cator. 

That about twenty months thereafter 
the said wife of Venice had, to his know- 
ledge, emerged from the convent where- 
unto she had been committed, and had 
been by agents to him unknown set up 
in state within the castle of Saint Goar. 
That the common report of the vulgar 
had been to the effect that the living 
body of his son, or otherwise his wraith 
and apparition, had marvelously her in- 
stalled in Saint Goar, having appeared 
boat-carried on the river to that end in 
the second quarter of the moon. That 
this rumor was openly incorrect, because 
the young man had never manifested 



224 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



himself unto him his father, though he 
had published many offers of paternal 
correction and discipline, and offered 




A CLERK SKILLED AND LEARNED. 

large reward for the body of his son, 
alive or dead. That the said offers hav- 
ing been wholly ineffectual, evident it 
was that his son was no more. That 
having at all times avoided the castle 
of Saint Goar, abominating its lights and 
its music, its glamour and its melancho- 
lious seclusion, he had no direct witness- 
ing to proffer on the diabolical character 
of the said white wife or widow, having 
heard but her harp from the river. 

Being asked whether it had been borne 
in unto his mind to have masses perform- 
ed for the perilous state of his son's soul, 
he devoted twelve thousand crowns to 
that use, and departed in all honor. 

Secondly hath appeared, on the priv- 
ilege extended by us not to be required 
to kiss the cross, and on the promise of 
liberty to retire in all freedom for the 
resumption of his traffic, a Jew named 
Shiloh al Rathschild, who hath by us 
been heard, maugre the infamy of his 
person and his faith, with the single end 
of enlightenment on the behavior of the 
said demon. Accordingly, hath been 
absolved from all oaths the said Shiloh, 
seeing that he is beyond the pale of the 
Church, and to us hath said that to the 
said sorceress or female appearance, who 
had come from the southern countries 
with intent to establish herself in these 
lands, he had leased, with records of 
bail, the castle of Saint Goar, fallen 
within his hands through bankrupture. 
That, as sureties, had given themselves 
up divers lords, squires and gentlemen 
drawn to the assistance of said sorceress 
by virtue of the charms, philtres and en- 



chantments to her belonging. That the 
gathering of the rents agreed upon had 
ever filled him with amazement, seeing 
that when led into her presence by one 
her servitor, a strange Moor half clothed, 
black and with white eyeballs, he had 
found the said female in rooms of pur- 
ple, vested in mourning weeds and blaz- 
ing with jewels, clothed in her Venetian 
locks of gold, evermore singing dirges 
of heavy dole in a voice whose sweet- 
ness could not be portrayed. That from 
time to time, in the way of his traffic, 
he had bargained unto the said female 
many things of cost, as plates of silver- 
gilt, chandeliers, Persian carpets, birds, 
stuffs, clavecins and other instruments 
of music curiously adorned, and dia- 
monds. Had likewise sent to her, on 
the behalf of neighboring lords, more 
than a thousand rare gifts. That the said 
female to the external eye presented no 
appearance of diabolical arts, but wore 
the guise of a comely woman mourning 
for her liege in all innocency. The said 
Shiloh al Rathschild, his castle of Saint 
Goar being confiscated to the Church 
for the vile and unholy usage to which 
he had put the same, was permitted to 
withdraw without being tortured. To 
the said Jew, before his departure, was 
shown the Moor or African, whom he 
recognized as the page of said demon. 

Thirdly, the aforesaid Moorish man 
(who, black from head to foot, hath been 
found to be deprived of the beard with 
which all Christian men are habitually 
furnished), having persevered in uttering 
no word after various torments and rack- 
ings, during which he hath complained 
in a high voice, is convicted of not 
speaking Christian language. 

Fourthly, hath come before us the most 
high, noble and puissant princess of 
Schwartz, and hath declared to us with 
tears, on the faith of the Evangels, to 
have laid in the earth her only son, dead 
by the deeds of the said female demon. 
The which noble youth, aged twenty 
years, having frequented the residence 
of said demon, in the manner of all the 
young lords of fifty leagues' vicinage, 
who had every one the habitude of vis- 
iting the sorceress with intent to make 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



225 



her change her widowhood, had in great 
despair thrown himself from the rock, 
rashly and blameworthily. And the said 
dame hath in addition said: "Alas, my 
lord ! this priceless treasure hath been 
taken from me and dropped into the pit 
by the demon. My poor boy, his hopes 
and his inheritance, his life and his eter- 
nal welfare, all of himself, and more than 
himself, saw I dashed on the rocks like 
a grain of corn in the teeth of a dragon. 
Therefore have I no other expectation of 
joy than to see in flames this sorceress 
nourished with blood and gold. Burn and 
torment the vampire who destroys souls. 
See, my lord judge, to the tormenting of 
this devil who has made me an orphan 
in my old days : she has all the flames 
of the fiery lake in her eyes, the strength 
of Samson in her locks, and instruments 
of unearthly music in her voice. She 
charms that she may kill body and soul 
in one blow. Oh, my son ! my son !" 
And the said princess of Schwartz, hav- 
ing purchased the burial of her son's 
body in consecrated ground for fifty 
thousand crowns, and bought two annual 
masses for his soul, hath retired in great 
dole, followed by a body of men-at-arms 
to her palace, at the command of the 
archbishop. 

Then fifthly hath appeared Hugo 
von Engelheim, aged twenty-and-one, 
brought into court by the sompnour and 
guarded by twelve pikemen, under ac- 
cusation of having conspired with divers 
lawless youths to lay siege to the gaol of 
the archbishopric and chapter, with in- 
tent to deliver the said sorceress. Not- 
withstanding his evil design, we have 
commanded Hugo von Engelheim to 
testify truly what he knew of the demo- 
niac in question ; who to our great out- 
rage hath said : " I swear the woman ac- 
cused of sorcery to be an angel, a perfect 
woman, and more worshipful of soul 
than of body — nowise evil, but generous, 
greatly given to aid the poor and suffer- 
ing. And this beloved wife of Venice, 
having sworn never to replace her knight 
of Bacharach, and thrown into despair 
many nobles, hath in pity granted me 
the worship of her chaste heart, of which 
she has made me the suzerain. There- 
's 



upon, electing the wife of Venice to be 
evermore my lady, admitted to breathe 
her air and to hear her voice, I find my- 
self happier than the lords of paradise. 




THE PALSGRAVE. 



Making it my task day by day to become 
the worthier of her patronage, I receive 
from her a thousand good advices ; as, 
to acquire the fame of a bold chevalier ; 
to become a strong knight, fearing naught 
but Heaven ; to honor the ladies, serving 
only one, and loving them all for her 
memory ; then, after many dangers and 
stout deeds, if her heart be still pleasing 
to mine, to hope that she might be my 
own in heaven, for assuredly she would 
give herself to none other than her dead 
crusader." Many further things hath 
said the young knight with a speed and 
vociferousness little considerate toward 
the secretary, and also with tendency to 
show clearly the abominable, unheard- 
of, fraudulent and damnable powers of 
the said female demon over the souls of 
youth. And hath been borne guarded 
to his father, with the intention to define 
the extent and tenure of his estates, and 
to know what might be the fine in his 
power to pay as the penalty for his dis- 
turbance of the force of justice. 

Sixthly, hath been drawn from gaol and 
brought before us the said woman pre- 



226 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



sumed to be a manifestation of the devil ; 
who, much broken by torture and the sal- 
utary effects of the rack, hath remained 
back-bowed and head-buried during all 




ercion. Master Geestmund the clerk 
hath, by force of Nature, dropped the 
quill and retired from court, declaring 
that he could not, without incredible agi- 
tations which harrow 
the brains, be witness 
to the torture. Thus 
concludeththe session 
and end these me- 
moirs, finished by the 
hand of me, Johan de 
Haga, the judge. 



THE ARTICLE OF DEATH. 



the reading of the testimonies precedent. 
And, asked if she had practiced many sor- 
ceries and melodies, charms and witch- 
crafts on divers knights of the Palatinate, 
made answer: "My knight lies deep in 
Rhine : let me join him." And asked if 
she had caused the death of the hered- 
itary prince of Schwartz, had replied : 
"My knight lies deep in Rhine: let me 
leap into his bed." And questioned on 
the spells and glamours of her house, on 
the tapers, and requiems, and mourning 
weeds, and palls, and spice -burnings, 
and rich harness, and intolerably sweet 
sounds reported thence to the court, had 
replied likewise: "My knight lies deep 
in Rhine: let me join him." 

Whereupon by us hath been required 
that she acknowledge herself to be a de- 
mon and redivest her body for the tor- 
mentor ; when suddenly hath she risen 
upright and dropped her mantle, crying, 
"lama woman, and mortal. Kill me !" 
Upon the sight of her face and throat, 
and the dropping of her hair, maliciously 
revealed of a sudden for the perversion 
of justice, and resembling the drawing 
of the curtain from the Italian altar-pic- 
ture in the cathedral, have I the judge 
been swiftly overclouded in the brain, 
unable to clearly see in the presence 
of those carnal beauties, which exercise 
over the will of man a supernatural co- 



This is from the act 
of extreme confes- 
sion made in his last 
hour and within the 
article of death by 
Johan de Haga, pen- 
itentiary of Saint 
Ewald : 
After trial had and performed, I visited 
the gaol of the wife of Venice, or female 
demon. When I was within the closure 
of the gates I saw no more any appear- 
ance of a prison, because that evil spirits 
under authority of witchcraft had filled 
the place with wines and meats, with 
flowers and perfumes. There saw I the 
wife of Venice, in form of a damsel white 
and little, on a carpet of Persia, wrapped 
in the hairs of her head and weeping; the 
chief gaoler and torsionary at her feet, 
which he rubbed with ointment after the 
torment. The damsel looked up and 
asked me why I would needs hurt her. 
Then, having been drawn by the remem- 
brance of her aspect in court, and by the 
special cords of diabolical temptation, 
into the focus of her sorcery, my strength 
departed from me. On questioning the 
demon I was bewildered with such terms 
of answer that it appeared to me in all 
firmness of persuasion that I should do a 
crime in punishing a poor soft maid, the 
which sobbed like a little infant. Then 
fell I further into the toil, my head being 
filled with warm light, my heart with 
young and leaping blood, and my be- 
witched body falling prostrate before 
her. I asked her to be my daughter, 
my joy, my treasure, my chatelaine, my 
wife. And she answered: "My knight 
lies deep in Rhine: let me go to him." 



7W.fi: A'EW HYPERION. 



227 



Thereupon got I home in fever, of which 
dow I fail, and desire the unction of the 
Church. 

This is a parcel from out the private 
chronicles of the Geestmund family, and, 
written in very clerkly style, appeareth 
to be in the hand of Gulielmus Geest- 
mund, in guise of his last testament and 
wiil : 

My only and well -beloved son: 
Before thou canst read this I shall be in 
the tomb, imploring thy prayers. Gov- 
ern well the family after that I am gone, 
for I have written these counsels from a 
sharp sense of the injustice and topping 
willfulness of men. In my youth, seeing 
the Church before me as mine alone way 
of promotion, I learned not only to read, 
but to write ; and by the aidance of Mas- 
ter Johan, the penitentiary, did assume 
the quill and inkhorn for the chapter of 
Saint Ewald in my thirtieth year. It was 
then that the process arose up against 
the demon of the Lorlei ; which, until the 
production of the culprit in court, was 
heard by Johan with wisdom and discre- 
tion ; but at the view of her face was Jo- 
han suddenly and shamefully persuaded 
of the said nymph's innocence, and died 
soon after dishonorably, much mourned 
for his apostasy, of fevers in which he 
saw many idle visions and splendors. 
Then Rufus of Fulda, a rigid and holy 
man, succeeded him as judge, and quick- 
ly brought the embroilment to an end ; 
for, perceiving that the only proceeding 
needful for the condemnation of said 
nymph, and the acquisition of her rich 
gems and moneys to the Church, was the 
retraction of the verdict of said Johan, 
he persuaded him into such a confession 
as deprived his first ruling of all credit 
and force. Thus confessed Johan the 
judge to her magics and the rich state 
she still kept up in her gaol, being per- 
suaded thereto by threats of the depriva- 
tion of extreme unction in his death-bed. 
In that time all believed the sorceress to 
be so abundantly provided with gold that 
she could, if so minded, buy the whole 
Palatinate ; yet did not the gold, when 
weighed and melted, suffice for more 
*han the overlaying of the high altar, to 



the niggardly cheating and cheapening 
of the Church's revenue. Now, I, Geest- 
mund, in visiting the gaol after the 
nymph's second torture, had found a 




THE LEAP OF LORLEI. 



chain of diamonds hidden in her hair, 
with some of which she had bought the 
gaoler to her, and, prudently possess- 
ing myself of said jewels without words 
spoken, was immediately (on the gaol- 
er's word, though I offered him a share) 
deprived of mine office, and forced to 
feign illness and privily forsake the land : 
they are the gems which hang about the 
neck of Saint Ludmilla in the north cha- 
pel. The clout being now wrung dry, 
the widow's possessions sequestered to 
holy use, her residence confiscated, and 
the souls of her victims solaced with 
many and costly masses, nothing fur- 
ther remained but to bury her out of 
sight, the formality of execution first be- 
ing had and observed upon her body. 
She was tortured, led up to penance ; 
tortured, let out to confession ; tortured, 
let go ; tortured, and released to the sol- 
diers. 

Of all which had I small care, being 
now in Flanders, and disgraced by those 
whom for prudence I do not name. Yet 
did the circumstance of her death reach 
unto mine ears, having caused huge talk 
in the country, and is still recited in 



228 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



ballads after vespers, secretly, with vain 
additions of them called poets. For when 
led to the stake this sorceress did over- 
come the men-at-arms with her suppli- 
cations and with the remanent enchant- 
ments of her beauty. So that they let 
her go on before, being likewise awed 
by the throng of youthful nobles and of 
beggars, her friends, who closed about 
them. Also were some present of the 
House of Bacharach, who deemed their 
kinsman insulted in the person of his 
widow ; for it seemeth that verily the pals- 
grave's son had returned from the infidel 
wars, and had lived certain months in 
bridal with her, until drowned a-fishing; 
but this the Church ever denied. Now, 
she, being got nigh Saint Goar, asked 
grace to go up for one more season unto 
the rock whence she had always thrown 
her dirges and musics athwart the stream ; 
and breaking away, the soldiers also 
making small resistance, she fled forth, 
much admired by all, and clomb from 
pinnacle to pinnacle of the rock, going 
very lightly on her feet, bruised from 
the torment ; and when mounted and 
all alone she flung nimbly out into the 



abyss; for they lie who say she first 
sang a dirge, but she went forth silently, 
falling like snow, only since hath she 
been heard to rise and sing. Thus was 
she undone, and I disgraced, who went 
into the butchering business, and am 
become a rich flesher. And now being 
in age, yet clear of head, I put certain 
thoughts into writing, my son, for thy 
guidance. In the first place, to live hap- 
py needs is it to abide far from those of 
the Church and from the nobles. Sec- 
ondly, always remain in the condition of 
butchery — marry thy daughters to good 
butchers, and nourish them in honor of 
flesh. So shall not any get hold of the 
Geestmunds, neither the State, nor the 
Church, nor the nobles, to whom, as it 
may fall out, and they being the strong- 
er, it will be necessary to lend certain 
crowns without ever indulging the hope 
of seeing them again. Thus shall every 
one, at all seasons, love and despise the 
Geestmunds, the poor Geestmunds ; and 
they shall not be burned or quartered 
for the advantage of Church or king. 





:pjl:r,t jcvxx. 



THE CURRENT OF FATE. 



,^IVi V\|' N \(Nj 




LATTER-DAY REFORMERS. 



I FINISHED my screed of Lorlei, and 
pocketed the old Tauchnitz edition 
of Ingoldsby out of which I had feigned 
to read it. "These antique records," I ob- 
served, "shed a curious light on the real- 
ities of church history." And I glanced 
at Mary Ashburleigh, who had heard the 
recital not unconcernedly. 

" True," she said ; "but was the Church 
ever so grasping and so cruel ?" — Adding, 
with an indescribable smile, " Those were 
tiresome times for vagabond widows." 



I gave Mrs. Asburleigh a little bolus 
of wisdom: "You must remember what 
is remarked by Lea, the authority in 
church history: ' Almost everything is to 
be forgiven to the mediaeval clergy, who 
represented an idea in times when phys- 
ical force was the only power respected.' 
The Dark Ages are, you must remember, 
past the virgin days of Christianity: she 
is now rather a widow grasping for her 
thirds among the close-fisted and nig- 
gardly executors. Her lucky day is over 

229 



230 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



— the day in which Charlemagne lent 
all the power of the State to the Church, 
which he used as an instrument in con- 
structing his evanescent civilization." 

" How impure, even in the greatest 
times of the Church, were the sources of 




THE BATTLE OF THE CREEDS. 

its power!" said my commander with 
her pretty sententiousness. 

"Millenniums are treacherous affairs," 
I answered. " Men usually get tired, and 
yawn them out of the way. Just here- 
abouts, you know, they claim that Chris- 
tianity, as a worldly empire, took its rise. 
It was over Andcrnach, the Germans 
will tell you, that Constantine saw the 
cross in the sky." 

"What a thought," said Mrs. Ashbur- 
leigh, kindling and letting fall her Bae- 
deker, "that combination and fusion of 
the Roman empire with Christianity ! 
The force that swayed the whole world 
made one with eternal Truth ! No dreams 
could have seemed too wild and beauti- 
ful for the faithful then. How I should 
like to have been some saint or holy wo- 
man of the time, just to have seen the 
emperor bow his helmet, and to catch 
the last shadows of the fading Cross as 
it rose out of the Rhine to embrace the 
world with its shadowy arms of air!" 

" There were such saints and holy 
monks, and their dreams were as bright 
as you can possibly imagine. With Rome 
converted, it seemed to them that the 
earth would become identical with heav- 
en. Lactantius, rejoicing after Constan- 
tine's adhesion, boasted, ' How blessed 
would be that golden age among men 
when love and kindness and peace and 
innocence and justice and temperance 



and faith should spread throughout the 
world, and neither prisons nor the sword 
of the judge would be wanted !' But the 
world wearied of its millennium, and for 
the sword of the judge Christianity soon 
became a most keen and persevering 
aspirant." 

"Using it on helpless wretches like 
poor Lorlei," put in Mrs. Ashburleigh. 
"The fact is," I went on, "the ideal 
of the mediaeval Church was too unnat- 
ural to last. When the clergyman can 
make humanity a strong worker in the 
state and in society, lending his relig- 
ion to the purging of politics and to the 
pleasantness of his own breakfast-table, 
then comes the statelier Eden back to 
men — not when they make their saint 
a stagnant solitary in a cell." 

"The statelier Eden will never come 
back to men," said Mrs. Ashburleigh 
archly, "without a woman in it." 

"Why, that is just the conclusion — 
don't you see? — that Christianity was 
forced to come to. And so at length 
you have the monk that married Cath- 
arine Bora." 

"You mean — " asked Mary Ashbur- 
leigh, whose attention, a little overtaxed, 
was wandering. 

"I mean Luther, of course. Germany 
may well be proud, for when Luther ar- 
rived, and stretched out his dark-robed 
arms in the attitude everybody knows 
from Kaulbach's Reformation - picture, 
then Constantine's cross came and stood 
a second time in the German sky." 
"What a rich country in prodigies!" 
" Precisely. And Germany, more than 
any other nation, has got accustomed to 
them and impatient of them. Never was 
there such a people for yawning away 
its millenniums. As for its Luthers, in 
these latter times they have become a 
mere drug. They call themselves Kant 
and Fichte and Herbart and Schelling 
and Hegel, and they appear with a new 
German millennium in their right hand 
and a new German Bible in their left." 

"And how many reformers have there 
been, then, for mercy's sake?" 

"Oh, the first was the serpent, as Heine 
will assure you. That footless blue-stock- 
ing, he says, that lithe lecturer, that pri- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



231 



vate expounder who addressed his class 
from a tree in the garden of Eden, ex- 
plained the whole of Hegel's system six 
thousand years before Hegel was born. 



This professor, to use Heine's words, 
1 clearly showed how the absolute con- 
sists in the identity of being and know- 
ing ;' or, in more familiar terms, ' Ye 




HE DRAGOMAN. 



shall not die, but shall know good from 
evil as gods.' " 

"Then reform," said my commander, 
"is one of the oldest of earthly privi- 
leges?" 

" Evidently. Did not the wisest of 
men, the prize pupil of the serpent, de- 
clare that there was nothing new under 
the sun, and no end of rewriting the 
biblosr 

We were on one of the "reformed" 
steamers, the American boats as they 
call them — handsomely making Ameri- 
canism a synonym for improvement in 
fluvial navigation. Most of the little 
comforts to which the Yankee is accus- 
tomed on his Sound steamers or Missis- 
sippi triremes were around us. At first 
the voyage was quiet enough : there had 
been but few passengers from Mayence. 
Until Bingen nothing in particular attract- 
ed our attention, and Mrs. Ashburleigh's 
sketch-book lay in her lap ominously 
gaping, like a voracious lion waiting to 
be fed. For me the flat transit was a 



grateful, dreamy period. I thought the 
river paused to hear my story of poor 
Lorlei : I thought the gentle banks roll- 
ed and fawned at the feet of me and my 
adored. 

But at Bingen our calm was violently 
interrupted. A precipitous invasion of 
tourists took place. Not only were there 
Bavarian opera-singers, Prussian officers, 
homeward-bound Leyden clerks and rat- 
tling Viennese, but there was at least one 
company from whose midst I could hear 
my own mother-tongue. I did not clear- 
ly distinguish the individuality of this 
party at first. The tourists rolled down 
the companion-way to deposit their bags 
and shawls. The stout porters of Bingen 
were handling immense trunks as ten- 
derly as egg-baskets. A confusion of 
boxes, crates and hampers rattled into 
the boat. A Swiss youth brought on a 
velocipede ; a governess appeared with 
a spaniel and a consumptive monkey ; 
there was a corpulent English mother in 
a wheeled chair; and a photographer, 



232 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




OEEKWESEL. 



fresh from the slaughter of unnumber- 
ed tourists beside the river Nahe, jumped 
red-handed among us, his camera in the 
arms of a servant, and ready to transfix 
us in groups at every pause of the voy- 
age. The porters trampled each other, 
couriers shouted, the monkey swore, and 
from the wheeled chair Boadicea, stand- 
ing loftily charioted, raved and shrieked 
between her daughters in her fierce vol- 
ubility. It was at the height of the tu- 
mult, just before pushing off from Bin- 
gen, that I was aware of a calm voice pro- 
ceeding from the English-tongued com- 
pany I speak of, and controlling the tur- 
moil like an orchestral baton when ev- 
erybody is tuning: "The next coupon 
wanted will be the green one : if each lady 
will select her green coupon and stuff 
it into her left glove, it will be ready for 
the dinner. By our arrangement, ladies, 
you dine at precisely two shillings in- 
stead of three ; the knowledge of which 
need spoil no one's appetite." 

I looked at the group in question. A 
circle of British spinsters had by some 
magic obtained possession of the bows. 
They were unencumbered ; their knap- 
sacks were stacked and ticketed down 
below with military precision ; their 
sketching-albums were ready on their 
laps ; their faces were calmly receptive, 



shaded by ample hats and gig-tops of 
sensible patterns. In the midst of them 
stood a gentleman with mutton - chop 
whiskers, his body diagonally bisected 
by the straps of his opera-glass, a little 
Mercury's hat on his head. Correctness 
and reliability shone all over his person 
like a varnish. He wore a white cravat, 
and looked much like Berkley in a tour- 
ist suit. He was now addressing the 
whole dovecote with a studied oration 
in which could by turns be heard the 
names of Rolandseck and Drachenfels, 
the Seven Mountains, Andernach, Linz, 
Stolzenfels, Marksburg, Ehrenbreitstein, 
Herzenach and Oberwesel. By a slight 
attention to his discourse I found that it 
was a judicious mosaic of paragraphs 
from Murray, Baedeker and Joanne. 

I listened to this Homer chanting the 
Odyssey of the Rhine. It was very com- 
plete : the proper stories were introduced, 
the suitable quotations from Byron, and 
the mild jokes appropriate to the local- 
ity. I waited to hear what the minstrel 
would say about the cliffs this side of St. 
Goar, from whose top the Lorlei leaped. 

It was not long in comi»g : " The rocks 
fancifully assigned to the Lorlei are four 
hundred and forty-seven feet in height. 
A man at the cottage will blow a horn 
and discharge a gun, to afford a test of 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



2 33 



the echo : the expense of the 
powder is borne by the steam- 
boat company. The partic- 
ular rock from which the 
nymph leaped is now pene- 
trated by the railway tunnel." 

All the spinsters put down 
the figures 447 in their al- 
bums. "Your sketch-books, 
ladies, will not be strictly ne- 
cessary before Oberwesel. 
The surroundings of Ober- 
wesel seem to have been ar- 
ranged expressly for artistic 
purposes : nothing is wanting 
there for the picturesque, 
whether woods, waters, ruins, 
rocks, rustic belvederes and 
aussichten, or cascades. The 
late mayor of Oberwesel, an 
artist of some repute, has pub- 
lished adrawing-book in 
which all the beauties are 
taken from his own surround- 
ings. This is the origin of the 
famous jest, that when you 
ask the echo for a definition 
of the burgomaster of Ober- 
wesel, you are answered — " 

"Oh, 1 know," said one of 
the ladies, the oldest. 

"What?" asked the gen- 
tleman with the opera-glass. 

"Easel! Don't you see, 
girls ? — an artist's easel." And 
the fair tourist collected her 
tribute of little laughs, better satisfied 
with her answer than if it had been the 
right one. 

The Mentor did not correct her. He 
continued: "Just beyond St. Goar we 
shall find the Neu-Katzenelnbogen and 
the Thurnberg. The first-named castle, 
known to English travelers as the Cat, 
is interesting as showing the obvious 
origin of Perrault's story of ' Puss-in- 
Boots.' This fastness, putting on at first 
the humble airs of a lowly hermitage, 
hardly lifted its walls from the level of 
the earth, and watched softly from be- 
hind a simple palisade of wood. It 
seemed less occupied with attack than 
self-defence. But all the while puss-in- 
sabots was not idle, but, like many seem- 




THE MOUSE. 



ing cowards, amassed a quantity of se- 
cret spoils from the wealthy merchant- 
trains that came up the Rhine ; so well 
that, by a judicious alternation of force 
and strategy, it made of its master one 
of the richest robbers on the river — a true 
marquis of Carabas. His end was that 
of all who in those days measured them- 
selves with the Church. The owner of 
the Cat aroused the jealousy of Bishop 
Hatto, surnamed ' The heart of the king.' 
A strong castle was built opposite, not 
on the hillside, but on the summit of the 
mountain, and Hatto called it the Mouse, 
declaring that this time the mouse should 
eat the cat. This was easily done, and 
the bishop made no bones of the pow- 
erful robber opposite, whose spoils and 



234 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



gold soon went to enrich the great church 
at Mayence. But Hatto went a little too 
far with his holy zeal, and, having spec- 
ulated in corn, was eaten up in his fast- 







CALVAKY OF ANDERNACH. 

ness by an army of mice, who devoured 
first his tabbies and then himself." 

And the guide, as a matter of course, 
recited Southey's poem, with sufficiently 
good accent and discretion : 

The cat sat screaming, mad with fear 
At the army of rats that were drawing near. 
They have whetted their teeth against the stones, 
And now they pick the bishop's bones. 

"Who can he be?" I asked of Mrs. 
Ashburleigh. "Some kind of a courier, 
I suppose ?" 

" He does not look to me at all like a 
courier," said my leader in a tone of re- 
buke, her eyes fixed approvingly on the 
fluent cicerone. 

When I next listened he had got still 
farther down the stream : he was evident- 
ly keeping his party posted well ahead. 
He described a town which was not with- 
out old and tender associations for me : 

"Andernach is largely built of black 
basalt taken from the neighboring hills. 
Some of you may have heard a curious 
but unsupported tradition of the Christ 
on the wayside cross of Andernach bow- 
ing its head : this legend is unconfirm- 
ed, and the citizens, unable to vouch for 
it, have carried the wooden figure inside 



the church. The anecdote doubtless 
came from the fact that the head of the 
principal figure was one day found 
broken and lying at the foot of the cal- 
vary in the church- 
yard, a renaissance 
structure erected in 
the Greek taste." 

"Do you know, I 
fancy," said I con- 
fidentially to Mrs. 
Ashburleigh, "that 
this must be the hon- 
est man who makes 
the guide-books for 
Murray? I never 
imagined before that 
the person had any 
particular existence 
in the flesh, but he 
must be somebody 
or other of corporeal 
substance." 

"He is a mysteri- 
ous but not unfasci- 
nating person," said the Dark Ladye : 
" he reminds me — But no matter. Who 
can the ladies be?" 

"I can hardly guess, Probably they 
are his short-hand writers to take down 
his notes. They all have albums." 

"Rolandseck, ladies," said the inexor- 
able voice, " is celebrated as having been 
built by Roland after he had been killed 
at Roncesvalles. From this remarkable 
specimen of posthumous construction we 
get the best view of the ' castled crag of 
Drachenfels,' opposite. This latter is 
one of the heights of the Siebengebirge, 
or Seven Mountains, so named because 
there are eleven of them. The village 
of Konigswinter will afford us a dozen 
donkeys, housed with a dozen scarlet 
saddle-cloths, by which to make the as- 
cent of ten hundred and sixty-six and a 
half feet. In climbing this hill you will 
enjoy another benefit from our system : 
the usual fee for the ascent is twelve and 
a half silbergroschen for each donkey, 
and a little less, or ten groschen, for the 
guide. Our arrangement affords this trip 
at six silbergroschen apiece, all around, 
for men and animals ; which, besides its 
economy for ourselves, avoids the draw- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



ing of invidious and disparaging distinc- 
tions between the donkeys and the dri- 
vers. For this enterprise, ladies, the blue 
tickets will please be in readiness." 

But the most copious of wells may 
pump itself dry, and there came a mo- 
ment when the eloquence of the man in 
the spyglass-strap came to a stop. At a 
signal from himself each lady extracted 
from a square tin box, made to resem- 
ble a Murray, a little thong of Australian 
meat and a few ounces of bread. Soon, 
instead of the steady voice of their en- 
tertainer, I could hear nothing from that 
quarter but the little mandibles of those 
fair beings. The man himself seemed 
to have no appetite except for his own 
mutton-chops, which he was fingering 
and chewing over the rail as I approach- 
ed him. 

"I beg pardon," I said, "but it is so 
pleasant to hear my native language — 
and one is so glad to meet a man of 
information — and 1 can hardly be mis- 
taken in thinking you in some sort a pub- 
lic character." 

The man bowed, left his whisker alone, 
and plunged for a card-case. I was as 
quick as he. 

" My name is — My card," I observed. 

"Certainly, certainly," he answered 
with equal civility: "my own is, as you 



2 35 
My 



will perceive — This is my card, 
name is 

COOKSON & JENKINSON." 

I acquiesced with another bow, though 
the gentleman's plurality of name left 
me considerable choice, and his " card " 
was a pamphlet of fifty pages. 

" I have no disposition to conceal my 
name, which represents perhaps the fore- 
most enterprise of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. I surmise that you are a fellow- 
countryman of mine?" 

"That I can hardly say," I replied with 
a smile, "until I know your own nation- 
ality. But even then I should be shy of 
claiming you as a compatriot, for I haven't 
the faintest idea what country I belong 
to myself. I have long been a renegade 
from my own nation, without attaching 
myself to any other. In fact, I am a 
Progressive Geographer in search of his 
home." 

"The very thing!" said the traveler: 
" we will find it for you. It is quite in 
our line. Our Tours include every coun- 
try on the face of the earth. We will 
establish you in little more than no time 
on the most advanced principles of eth- 
nographical distribution. We already 
cover the globe with our Advertised 
Routes. Our terms " (and he took out a 




m^^^m^ 



URACHENFELS. 



236 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




THE SERVILE WAR. 



long zigzag ticket resembling an accor- 
deon) "are arranged with an advantage 
to the purchaser of from twenty-five to 
fifty per cent. We ensure satisfaction, 
avoid extortion and guarantee sound 
sleep, for we fine landlords for all hard 
or unclean beds. In a few years travel- 
ing will be unknown except through us 
— in fact, impossible but by our assist- 
ance. We are arranging objects of in- 
terest along all routes that are a little 
deficient in incident. Wherever a de- 
ficiency of ruins exists we supply the 
need. The Rhine will be quite another 




SERVILE RECONCILIATION. 

thing when you next pass, my dear sir : 
the proprietors have done a little here- 
abouts in the way of artificial ruins, but 
nothing to what we contemplate." 
My Ariadne had now approached, 



and was listening to the details of this 
new Bacchic conquest of India. Her 
face wore a look of great interest and 
sympathy. "May I ask whom you have 
with you ?" she inquired. 

"They are governesses and school- 
teachers, madame, doing the Rhine un- 
der my auspices. The party is small, 
but most intelligent." 

"But how did you manage to collect 
so many ladies of similar age and con- 
dition ?" 

"Not the least trouble in the world, 
madame. I combed them from the ad- 
vertising columns of the Times in 
three days." 

Mrs. Ashburleigh took me aside. 
"That is the image of the man I have 
dreamed of," she said hastily. "I 
perceive that for the present my des- 
tiny is cast with his. Do not ask me 
further : I feel all you would say. I 
confess to you that my heart has been 
touched. We shall meet again. But 
for this time I shall enter the company 
of that gentleman. It only remains 
for you to seek, at the next stopping- 
place, the best excuse for leaving me." 
This mysterious advertisement 
quite overcame my courage. What 
did she mean — rejection, encourage- 
ment or general mystery ? As for the 
pretext of which she spoke, accident 
furnished it, most unfortunately for me, 
at Coblenz. 




I=»-AJE5,T XATIII. 



THE DIFFICULTY OF CATCHING UP. 




TOMB OF HOCHE AT WEISSENTHURM. 



"TT7HAT are these cruel words?" I 
VV cried to Mrs. Ashburleigh, "and 
why, after so faithful an attendance, am 
I overslaughed in a moment by a cou- 
rier?" 

"I never saw him before. He is a 
link, Mr. Flemming— a link. As for my 
cruel words, though we have not time 
for many speeches, I will repeat them. 
I confess freely that my present journey, 
if it has found my heart sleeping, has 



not left it untouched. Now seek your 
pretext and abandon me : yonder is 
Coblenz." 

And now my factotum Charles, work- 
ing in dark collusion with Fate, proceed- 
ed to give the pretext in question. It 
was his chance, and he magnified it— 
so successfully that the great sunstroke 
suffered by Charles at Coblenz has be- 
come an historical epoch among my 
friends. 

237 



»3« 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




THE COLPORTEUSE. 



Some of the English schoolmistresses, 
whose occupations were of a noisier na- 
ture and indisposed them for listening 
to the travel- 
i n g-agent's 
lectures, had 
found a nook 
on the deck to- 
ward the stern. 
From this 
group a cry of 
female shriek- 
ers roused me. 
The school- 
mistress who 
was declaim- 
ing the part 
of Thekla in 
Wal lens tein 
broke off ab- 
ruptly ; the two 
schoolmistresses who were going over 
the German declensions broke up their 
mutual quizzing-class ; the hoarse school- 
mistress with a talent, who was running 
up the vocal scales of an absolute prima 
donna, and who learnt in suffering what 
to teach in song, left her exercises : they 
all screamed, the vocalist embracing the 
opportunity to discharge her highest head- 
note, finished with a shake. The elder 
lady-grammarian approached me, say- 
ing, " Don't distress yourself, sir, but I 
fear your man's overpowered — " 

" My man overboard ? Can I believe 
my ears ?" 

"You can't believe your ears, and the 
man's not overboard. I said overpower- 
ed, as plainly as lip;; could utter the com- 
pound." 

And she deserted me, flouncingly. 
Through the aperture left by her person 
I perceived a marble group, consisting 
of Charles, insensible, and the traveling- 
agent, rigid as a sculptured Charity : the 
latter sustained the former with one hand, 
and with the other inundated him with 
hartshorn. 

"Help me down with him into the 
saloon. I have a battery among my 
baggage which has recuperated whole 
regiments of fainting females," said this 
man of resources. 
We got him down the stairs. Mrs. 



Ashburleigh, never de trofi, was now par- 
ticularly useful, for she stood in an atti- 
tude of astonishment in the gangway, 
which she completely blocked, prevent- 
ing the mass of ladies from precipitating 
themselves upon us. 

" I shall continue the hartshorn, with 
cupping and galvanism. The lower or- 
ders like an abundance of physicking. 
Leave Cookson & Jenkinson alone for 
dealing with the servile classes !" con- 
tinued the excellent man, while I, over 
come with sorrow for my poor friend, 
was indisposed to pay much attention. 
"The management of domestics is one 
of our specialties. At first we counted 
against us every Swiss chambermaid and 
Alpine guide. I have had them point- 
ing after me as a man accursed, but now 
they follow me like little dogs ; and it is 
all owing to our happy idea of a matri- 
monial agency." 

"You marry people, too ?" 

" We began with the lower orders. But 
we are working upward. We distributed 
the servant-girls among the guides that 
go up the mountains — the shrillest wench 
to the guide of greatest altitude. We 
had our circular printed on red cotton 
handkerchiefs and given away at fairs, 
until the remotest Black Forester knows 
us, and every washerwoman is a matri- 
monial colporteuse. You will find the 
wedding-card the last coupon." (And 
the man actually showed me the formula, 




GALIGNANI. 



in pink, at the end of his zigzag paste- 
board.) "I believe the lady in your 
company is one of our patrons: I am 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



239 



sure she corresponded with us from Hei- 
delberg." 

"Let us attend to our patient," said I, 
not exactly liking the last allusion, but 
unable to think much of anything 
but my unlucky Charles: "he is 
opening his eyes." 

The poor fellow revived enough to 
turn a dark purple and to grasp my 
hand. While his brow was burning 
to the touch he complained of cold 
and his teeth chattered. The im- 
promptu physician shook his head. 
" It is a more serious case than I like 
to undertake," said he : "you had 
better give him rest and a good 
doctor. Get him on land the first 
time we stop." 

As he spoke the steamer was com- 
ing to a pause at Coblenz. And so, 
with my big great baby half in my 
arms, my trunks forgotten, and only 
my tin box strapped to me — denuded as 
when I started on my walk to Marly — I 
found myself staggering to the shore. 

Mrs. Ashburleigh found time to console 
me as I left the boat stunned and heart- 
broken. " Never fear," she said. " I am 
in experienced hands, and shall do ex- 
tremely well. If you discover any curi- 
ous wall-papers in Coblenz, do not for- 
get that in me you have always a true 
and grateful friend." 

The representative of Cookson & Jen- 
kinson grasped my fingers, in which he 
left a little printed matrimonial scheme. 
In the confusion of our disembarking, 
the admirable woman I adored, whose 
very bewilderments had an inspiration 
in them, lost her balance in such a way 
as to set her weight on Charles's instep, 



I had the pain of seeing the travelers' 
agent assume Mrs. Ashburleigh, whom 
he seated among his clients with a pro- 
tecting manner very hard for me to bear. 




THE SYMPOSIUM. 




EXTINGUISHED. 



and I am certain that nothing that had 
been done for him was of so stimulating 
an effect as this primitive application. 



As I had parted with Francine at Carls- 
ruhe, as I had parted with Berkley and 
Hohenfels at Heidelberg, as I had parted 
at Wildbad with the revelers of £pernay, 
so I now saw my Ariadne drifting away 
on the tide of destiny. My Ariadne, do 
I say ? Nay, rather was / the Ariadne, 
and Coblenz my Naxos ! 

On our route to the nearest hotel 
Charles's complaint took a pronounced 
form of menengitis. His brain seemed 
to wander, for he asked in a low, thick 
voice for his " young master." The peo- 
ple at the Traube inn received us with 
positive rudeness, the landlord declaring 
that he had no room for maniacs and 
gentlemen without baggage. I was un- 
able to see that want of baggage would 
tax his room more heavily than the pres- 
ence of it, but I readily agreed with him 
to leave his premises as soon as possible. 
I asked for the address of some sanitary 
establishment away from the noise of the 
town, and the eager host poured out the 
names of a whole college of doctors. A 
happy accident led me to choose the ther- 
mal establishment of Herr Elssasser in 
the village of Capellen, beneath the cas- 
tle of Stolzenfels, a league or so from the 
city. Blessed be the chance that led us 
to this Samaritan ! He keeps remedies 
for the mind as well as for the body. Up 



240 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



to the second day my humble friend's 
hallucinations increased, while his pro- 
prietor poured out a stream of letters to 
Mary Ashburleigh, with the direction left 




blank upon the envelopes, because neith- 
er she nor I had attended to that import- 
ant little specification. On the fifth day 
Charles took his first soup, and I was 
able to water the poignant recollection 
of the Dark Ladye with a gentle thought 
or two directed to Francine : on the same 
day I applied myself, not without dif- 
ficulty, to some letters for my male ac- 
quaintance. In ten days my patient was 
lustily calling for kidneys and coffee, and 
my own sombre spirit had recovered so 
much of its natural versatility as to no- 
tice that Charles's nurse, a maiden from 
Saverne of the name of Gredel, was a 
model for grace and as handsome as the 
"beautiful chocolatiere." 

On the twelfth morning, as Charles 
was trifling with a jelly in his easy-chair, 
and his master — or servant rather, as the 
case then stood — was translating news 
for him out of the broad page of Galig- 
nani, a footstep resounded through the 
corridor. 

" It is Gredel," said Charles : " she has 
new shoes on." 

But I called him an idiot, resuming 
with his recovery my usual endearments. 
The step was the step of Hohenfels, as 
I knew very well. I rose from my seat 



quite guilty and troubled. I turned to- 
ward the door : the latch rattled, and the 
baron appeared, a volume of poetry in 
his hand. He shambled up to me, and 
after his dear immemorial custom kissed 
my cheeks and wished me well. 

"Am I not to be scolded ?" I asked. 

"For the sickness of your aide-de- 
camp ? I am hardly so unreasonable. 
I wish to interest you in my chemical 
experiments. Was it not here you for- 
merly learned the tale of the archbishop 
who lived in the Stolzenfels and prac- 
tised alchemy according to the Hermetic 
philosophy ?" 

"It is true, my friend, that I abode 
here in Capellen for a season when very 
young, and gave my mind a great deal 
to the old archbishop who tried to make 
unto himself a child in the manner taught 
by Paracelsus — a foolish homunculus in 
a glass bottle. But I told all the story in 
a book written long ago, and Heir Els- 
sasser informs me that I told a fib, for 
that the Stolzenfels was a ruin long 
before 1 541, the year in which Eremita 
Paracelsus died in Salzburg." 

And the baron plunged with me into 
chemistry as if we had only parted since 
breakfast. As the science became, in 
his descriptions, seriously mixed up with 
the Schiller he had been reading, and 
as my own enthusiasm for chemistry is 
entirely mediaeval and scholastic, we did 
not add much to what is known of the 
subject. But Hohenfels and Berkley, 
with the assistance of young Von Ramm, 
had invented an artificial whey out of 
substances entirely mineral, which Berk- 
ley was coming to explain to Doctor 
Elssasser. 

Before the baron of Hohenfels would 
take a seat he drew from his pocket- 
book a couple of notes and handed them 
to me. They both presented the view 
Of a broken or unlatched seal, and a 
superscription addressed to my friend. 
"Read," he said: "they concern you 
rather than myself." 

The first, signed " Fortnoye," recalled 
to monsieur the baron's recollection the 
pleasant friendship mutually formed at 
Heidelberg, and desired news of Mr. 
Paul Flemming. It begged to know 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



241 



whether I was actually residing at Paris 
or at Marly, or was on the route of my Ger- 
man peregrinations. The writer's 
intended wife, who kept me "in 
the very kindest remembrance," 
desired to have me for grooms- 
man at the wedding. 

"And who is this vintner's no- 
ble landlady ?" asked the baron 
with the very faintest possible in- 
terest ; "and how comes it that 
she has kept you so very kindly 
in her memory ?" 

I turned and stared. "Don't 
you know ?" I asked. 

" H'm ! Not in the least," said 
Hohenfels, who was carefully set- 
ting his watch. 

"H'm," said I myself. "The 
proposed bride of M. Fortnoye is 
an enchanting little fairy in an 
artisanne cap — No, no, not at 
all ! I mean to say, the object of 
M. Fortnoye's attentions is a superb Eng- 
lishwoman of the most brilliant accom- 
plishments and highest distinction — 
No, that is not right, either. When I 
come to think of it, I have not the re- 
motest idea whom that insupportable, 
meddling marplot of an odious Fortnoye 
is going to marry. Hohenfels, I don't 
know what he is going to do. That per- 
son has sealed the wretchedness of my 
existence." <. 

" How has he done that, if you don't 
know what he is doing ?" 

"The fact is, Hohenfels, I am but try- 
ing to deceive myself. I do know his 
intended : I have the fact from her own 
lips." 

"And who is the fair object ?" 

"She says," I answered, now fairly in- 
renched behind my handkerchief, "that 
ohe would pass through fire to save him. 
I have myself been the accomplice of 
my own destruction, for I have escorted 
her on what she confessed to be a wed- 
ding-journey — a wedding that Heaven 
will bless, she hopes. Fortnoye had some 
romantic association with her at a grave 
in Laaken ; besides, the lady's previous 
husband was in the spirit-trade. Her 
name is Ashburleigh, and she is the most 
graceful authoress in Europe." 
16 



"As you like," said Hohenfels, looking 
narrowly at me. " Have you settled on 




HOW HOCHE CROSSED THE RHINE. 



a wife for the wine-agent ? I only want 
you to make up your mind. Have you 
quite decided ? Whatever contents you 
will suit me perfectly." 

" My friend, I cannot deny it. I am in 
the lady's confidence : I have but just left 
her on the river yonder. I brought her 
from Schwetzingen to Frankfort, from 
Frankfort to Castel, and from Castel to 
Coblenz." 

" Very well," said the baron. " If you 
have decided, you may as well read 
the second letter. But I fear it conflicts 
fatally with your theory. The lady in 
question, this distinguished authoress and 
accomplished widow, at the moment when 
she is going to marry another seems to 
have become an unresisting prey to your 
enchantments. For the proof, read!" 

It was a note from my cook. She 
poured upon Hohenfels a deluge of con- 
fidences, blamed him for not taking bet- 
ter care of Monsieur Flemming, protested 
that she was palsied from idleness, and 
promised to leave the key in the door 
and instantly seek other service. She 
knew, by the most positive information, 
that I was paying my addresses to a trav- 
eling adventuress of the watering-places, 
a self-styled widow, a great brune — a 
Mrs. Asburlais, or some such name. 



242 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



Then renewed lamentations: she was 
not accustomed to having a lady in the 
kitchen, she was about to suit herself 
elsewhere, etc. 

I knew my good servitor, and I made 




TAKING EXERCISE. 



little of her threats. But who could have 
been the tale-bearer ? who could have 
been the sender of the "positive infor- 
mation " ? As I looked around inquiring- 
ly, with the letter in my hand, my eye 
met the eye of Charles. My valet twist- 
ed himself uneasily in his easy -chair. 
The author was confessed. 

" Do you know," said Hohenfels, " you 
are getting to be a hard horse to bridle ? 
I have given you your head long enough. 
I supposed you already at Marly, and 
had prepared to follow you thither. As 
I was strapping my trunk I got a letter, 
undated, as usual, but with the postmark 
of Coblenz : a day or two after your good 
cook writes me that you are marrying a 
soldier of fortune. You need not try to 
protest. I was alarmed. You are nei- 
ther young nor beautiful, but you are cut 
out for the victim of an adventuress. I 
interrupted my chemicals, left Berkley 
in a bath of artificial whey, and rushed 
to Coblenz. Thence to Stolzenfels, where 
I was prepared to meet the Lorlei and 
dispute the prey with her. Happily, I 
learn from Dr. Elssasser that your skirts 
are clean, or rather that you brought no 
skirts into Capellen. The defendants are 
acquitted, the house is pure, but I have 
no confidence in you for the future. To 



make things sure, you must accoutre 
yourself with your botany-box once more, 
and come along with me." 

"What are you thinking of?" I cried. 
"Charles is the doctor's most beautiful 
case : I cannot break up Dr. Elssasser's 
clinic. Besides, as a minor annoyance, 
the thing would be fatal to Charles." 

"Nonsense! We shall leave Charles 
here. Berkley is coming immediately to 
this establishment, which he has known 
for years, and where he has drunk oceans 
of whey." 

I deliberated a minute: "The fact is, 
I cannot support the effort. It may seem, 
Hohenfels, but a slight service to attend 
the wedding of this fatal Epernay wine- 
agent, for whom I have had a sort of 
fascinated attachment ever since I saw 
him in a white beard befogging that 
Scotch quack, but the marriage will tear 
my heartstrings, and it is asking too 
much — asking too much." 

" I care but little for your Epernay 
vinegar-man in a beard. All I want is 
to set you in motion again. You need 
not return by way of Epernay, where 
your doings, as I have heard, were rather 
discreditable. We will go quite around 
by the north, taking Cologne and Brus- 
sels. Next Sunday you may be at home 
among your geography-books." 

All I could obtain was a furlough till 
the next morning. Hohenfels wished to 
see Ehrenbreitstein. We took a carriage, 
rolled into Coblenz, and thence over the 
Rhine, crossing the bridge, to the moun- 
tain on which, in its new, bare strength, 
sits the stark fortress. Like the serpents 
in the cradle of a just-born Hercules, the 
Moselle and the Rhine wind in from the 
distance. Then we drove down again 
into the town, winding round and round 
the mountain as in the ascent, and so 
losing foot by foot the broad panorama 
of palace - studded plain. And then 
across the bridge once more, through 
the fashionable quarters of common- 
place Coblenz, and back to our nest un- 
der Stolzenfels. Through the twinkling 
twilight-lamps of Capellen I now began 
to look out for Charles, at such an hour 
usually to be found, since his convales- 
cence, supporting a street-corner, com- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



^43 



Training with his soul and staring at the 
donkeys. But not in street or doorway 
lurked Charles at this final hour of a final 
day. I found him, when I went to order 
his early attendance for the next 
morning, enthroned in the kitchen 
amid a symposium of maids and 
male nurses, freely distributing the 
sparkling Moselle that he had pur- 
chased himself, and absorbing gust- 
ily a good marrowy soup that Gredel 
had made in special honor of his 
departure. 

"Call me at six, Charles," said I, 
"that we may get bright and early 
into Coblenz." 

" Certainly, monsieur," replied 
the invalid, a monarch here in his 
own country. "What wine may I 
offer monsieur, that he may toast 
the ladies ?" 

The next morning, as a matter 
of course, it was I who woke up 
Charles, whom I found extinguish- 
ed under his nightcap in his hos- 
pital-cot, dreaming the sweet dreams 
of innocence and Moselle. We took a 
sunrise review of good Doctor Elssass- 
er and his agreeable family. The phy- 
sician, his perpetually head- kerchiefed 
wife, Gredel (who had accepted my toast 
with piquant bashfulness), the honest 
gymnasts and acrobats who nursed the 
patients, had all aided me in one way 
or another, and gave me a pleasant 
hand -shake at departure. Even Blitz, 
the great bull-dog that kept the cab- 
bage-garden and had looked on me at 
first as a natural enemy, relented and 
gave his paw. 

We left Coblenz just as the morning- 
mists were rolling off the Broad Stone 
of Honor and the dewy lights and shad- 
ows chased each other along the Rhine- 
shores. There was a heavenly girl in 
the principal English party on deck, with 
a sweet veiled hat and admirably short 
skirts. But why do I mention her ? Why 
mention Gredel ? Hohenfels was be- 
side me, guarding me with his motherly 
blue eye ; and besides, had I not an en- 
emy who made it a point to intercept 
me whenever a chance acquaintanceship 
with some lovely woman arrived at the 



point where it became interesting ? Was 
there no Fortnoye in the air, hovering 
fatally between me and female beauty ? 
Fortnove would affront me had I the 




THE AMATEUR BOAT-STEWARD. 

mind to wive as abundantly as the Grand 
Turk. By reason of Fortnoye I shall 
die a bachelor, henpecked by my cook, 
and with constant threats of divorce even 
from her. 

The last thing I noticed at Coblenz 
was the famous Russian pleasantry, 
which, as the only Russian joke I ever 
happened to meet with, has stuck in my 
mind. While Napoleon's army was on 
its way to conquer the kingdom of the 
Czars, the French mayor in occupation 
wrote on the fountain here a little brag- 
gart epigram, to the effect that this was 
a mere milestone on the way to the 
French province of Russia : after the 
Corsican's fall it was the turn of Russia 
to make epigrams, and the Czar's com- 
mandant in the city inscribed his name 
just beneath, like the vise on a passport, 
only biting it in deeply with the indelible 
pen of the stonecutter: ''Seen and ap- 
proved by us, Russian commandant in 
Coblenz." It was the eloquence of events 
that made the jest tell. 

But just below lies the body of Hoche, 
whose audacious crossing of the Rhine 
under the very swords of the Austrians 
gives a real dignity to the French name 



244 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



hereabout. It is a little difficult to see 
the lustre of his reputation across the 
intolerable sulphurous splendor of Na- 
poleon's, which obscures, as by the ex- 
plosion of a volcano, the glories that 




MUTUAL ESTEEM. 



came immediately before him in date. 
Hoche, Marceau, Desaix, Kleber formed 
a worthy and noble group of standard- 
bearers who gave consideration and dig- 
nity to the first French republic. Of all 
their names, that of Hoche is perhaps 
the loftiest. It seems to make higher, 
by some hundreds of feet, the little trun- 
cated pyramid at whose base it is carved 
on the circular tumulus at Weissenthurm. 
The generals of the First Revolution were 
brave and devoted. But from out that 
earlier constellation one planet, at first 
unnoticed, rose and swelled and bright- 
ened so terribly, and cast such long-dart- 
ed shadows on the earth below, and cut 
such chasms in heaven when it burst, 
that the cluster beyond it looked pale 
and poor, and thus hardly anybody con- 
jures by or honors this bold young dawn- 
star lying where it fell beside the Rhine. 
As we passed Weissenthurm I uncov- 
ered to the tomb of Hoche, as I felt that 
my exemplar, Franklin, would have done. 
Any one of those brave heroes would 
have been, with only opportunity given, 
a La Fayette, and his name been sung 
to glorious rest, night after night, by 
sweet lips all over the American conti- 



nent. As I uncapped to the pyramid, 
Hohenfels chanted Becker's popular ode 
as a sort of challenge : " It never shall 
be France's, the free, the German Rhine !" 
I could not help muttering for my own 
part, upon that, the keen, taunting reply 
to Becker by Alfred de Musset, I have 
heard it rise from so many studios and 
cabarets, with the magnificent snarl in 
its chorus . "Nous Tavons eti voire Rhin 
AUemand /" 

But we did not carry this conflict of 
national predilections too far. The lav- 
ish beauties of the route were constantly 
interposing themselves as harmonizing 
objects, and my own soul was busy strew- 
ing regrets and memories, like wreaths of 
immortelle, on every jutting corner of 
the way. At Andernach, as at Capellen 
and Coblenz and Salzig, I had precious 
reminiscences to cook and to serve, hot 
and hot, for the baron: "A century's 
rounded quarter lies between these scenes 
and my earliest familiarity with them, 
Hohenfels : it makes me feel, somehow, 
as if I were looking at everything at an 
angle of forty-five degrees. These places 
I saw in boyhood, as I was journeying 
to meet you in Heidelberg : their images 
lie for me, distinct and precious, at the 




THE SLUMBER OF HEALTH. 

end of all that swelling arc of time. 
Resuscitating them thus is like digging 
up the fabled treasures that lie at the 
bottom of the rainbow. From Salzig a 



THE NEW HYPERION 



2 45 



fair boatwoman rowed me away down to 
Kamp, telling me the while a legend of 



lenz I remember how I called to my ser- 
vant, a fellow as universally and reliably 



Geraldine of the Liebenstein. At Cob- I ignorant as Charles, for the meaning of 




cologne: the hotel de ville. 



the Man in the Kaufhaus. At Ander- 
nach I wondered over quaint stories of 
the wooden Christ that mended the leak 
in the roof of pious Frau Martha, and 
of the tower-keeper's daughter. Which 
are the true images, baron — the pictures 
of that olden time or those I enjoy with 
you to-day ? The early ones almost seem 
the more real, for besides the fact that they 
were seen with the clearness of youth, 
they were crystallized and made tangible 
by being put into a book." 

And I remembered, what I did not re- 
call to my companion, that these first 
wanderings were undertaken in the hor- 
rible restlessness of having lost a dear 
friend, in the exile of a shattered home, 
and because, to use the old words, Paul 
Flemming "could no longer live alone 
where he had lived with her." Were 
the fair faces more lately encountered 
lost as irrevocably? To say nothing of 
pretty Gredel, was I to bid farewell also 
to Mary Ashburleigh and Francine ? 

So we made Bonn. Charles, in view 
of his sunstroke, was not allowed to show 



his nose above-decks. Hohenfels and I 
were about equally concerned for this 
burly invalid. Immediately on boarding 
the boat at Coblenz the baron had taken 
Charles firmly by the elbow and march- 
ed him down stairs into the mysterious 
region which in a steamer is divided off 
into saloons and baggage - bins : here, 
as the patient must not lack exercise, 
Hohenfels marched him conscientiously 
up and down. It was not the least droll 
of spectacles to see the baron achieving 
this sanitary duty, the natural aimlessness 
of his long legs increased by obstacles 
and by the throbbing of the engine — 
leading Charles blindly over mounds of 
baggage, plumping him up against doz- 
ens of waiters, cutting him with the edges 
of tables and delivering him upon plush 
divans. After thirty minutes of these de- 
lights he left the sick man to his devices 
and came up on deck to read poetry to 
me. A few minutes afterward, uneasy for 
Charles in my turn, I went down to see 
what had become of him. Knowing 
his modest instincts, I was hardly sur- 



246 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



prised to find that he was in neither sa- 
loon nor in among the baggage. But 
when the passages and byways of the 
boat had been searched without effect, 
down to the oily and coaly recesses oc- 




THE ETERNAL RUBENS. 



cupied by the engines and the fires, I 
began to be alarmed, and really feared 
that another delirium had sent my poor 
man over the ship's side. There was, 
however, a little lean-to chamber exca- 
vated under the stairs for the use of the 
chief cook, and here my master was dis- 
covered at last, perspiring and humming 
for contentment like a warm tea-kettle, 
occupied in scraping saucepans and 
rinsing dishes for the use of the stew- 
ards. He could not stand still doing 
nothing below-decks, he explained : he 
was not used to it. 

I marched up stairs satisfied. Hohen- 
fels was looking for me about the deck. 
"Apropos of Fortnoye, whom I scarcely 
know," said he, "have you written to him 
about this wedding ? He appears to be a 
good fellow, and to appreciate my play- 
ing on the accordeon." 

"You know I have not: I don't know 
his address in Epernay." 

"You might have written in care of 
any of the champagne-merchants." 

"I shall write when we three are snug 
at Marly. It is hardly worth while to try 
and establish a communication with him, 
when to avoid him we have taken all 
this detour. There is always plenty of 



time to write when it is a refusal you are 
sending." 
"So you shall refuse ?" 
"I refuse absolutely. I would not de- 
lay my return to Marly by two hours to 
see your own wedding, my mediaeval 
baron." 

"You may be right, Flemming. 
At your age it is best not to frequent 
either weddings or interments : a 
spectator is so often persuaded by 
the force of example." 

" My age ? You know it : I am 
forty-eight." 
"At least." 

Arriving at Bonn, I haled Charles 
from his well, wheiice he came up 
glowing and candid, like Truth. His 
adieux with the cook were touch- 
ing: never had he had such piles 
of plates to wipe, and his spirits 
rose with the occasion. He was brisk 
and active, mending visibly beneath 
our eyes. He took on himself, for 
the first time since his attack, the func- 
tions of service, and terribly incom- 
moded the baron and myself by inces- 
sant and needless changes of our books, 
newspapers, glasses, etc. Finally, at Co- 
logne, in the Hotel de Hollande, I had 
the pleasure of seeing him sink into a 
cherubic, natural sleep in broad day- 
light — the sleep of utter weariness, con- 
tent and health. 

The Hollande is a convenient house, 
because it is just over the principal pier 
of the great bridge, and most of the life 
of the city comes pouring beneath your 
window like a stage-pageant. Crowds 
rush constantly to and fro, even as the 
allegorical beings who poured across the 
bridge of Mirza. Like Mirza's bridge, 
too, this causeway of fourteen hundred 
feet breaks open now and then with a 
sudden pitfall, into which no doubt an 
unwary passenger may tumble occasion- 
ally : the drawbridge is opened, that is 
to say, the driving crowds collect in des- 
peration, and are often detained half an 
hour or more before the vessel passes 
and the lid is shut. But I cannot de- 
scribe bridges and architecture. Let an- 
other try to get up a joke on the eleven 
thousand virgins who grin at St. Ursula 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



247 



from their shelves above the faces of the 
little school-girls kneeling there at con- 
fessional. I saw them, but I heeded not. 
The commissionnaire, who had been a 




THE FIRST YOUNG MAN. 



valet of Chevalier Bunsen's, remarked 
to me in English that Attila"put she's 
all in a carrt and meurrtrred she's." 
And I replied, "It would take an un- 
common cart to hold her." The honest 
fellow bowed, not knowing that I meant 
Mary Ashburleigh. I dreamed of noth- 
ing but her, my own, my old, original 
best half. My love for her was ancient 
and gray, while her eidolon in my eyes 
was the achieved image of perfect youth. 
Could I ever have given Fortnoye reason 
to believe that I would be the grooms- 
man of him and this paragon ? Had she 
spoken of him to me as her intended 
husband, or extinguished in my breast 
by her behavior the fluttering hope that 
I might yet conquer a place in her re- 
gard ? 

I only remember how I was wearied 
with the eternal Rubens. That inex- 
haustible man was baptized though not 



born here, and, taking the names of St. 
Peter and St. Paul, devoted a great pari 
of his life to celebrating their histories. 
He has endowed the church of St. Peter's 
with one of his acrobatic chefs-d'oeuvre, 
and Hohenfels actually wanted me — me, 
a man with not only an Ashburleigh but 
a Francine upon my bosom ! — to admire 
the impasto and appreciate the brio and 
befog myself in the Chiaroscuro ! Let no 
lover travel in Germany to soothe his 
heart-pain. The churches — which are 
exactly like the galleries — all offer you 
the same distractions : a Rubens, always, 
in my opinion, hung upside down — the 
martyrdom of St. Peter certainly is ; and 
certain Diirers and Holbeins, esteemed 
more sacred in feeling than the Rubenses, 
simply because they are stiff and formal, 
but with no better glimpse of holy or any 
other sentiment than a signboard. In each 
of these places, when you have visited all 
the apparent curiosities, and paid your 
toll to the young man who has accom- 



rn 




THE SECOND YOUNG MAN. 

panied you, another young man, exactly 
like the first, springs fuming out of the 
ground, shakes some keys, and shows 
you a still more sacred Durer or Holbein. 



248 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



The second young man charges twice as 
much as the first young man. You now 
believe in the doppelganger. 

" Do you know," said I dreamily to 
Hohenfels, "that Agrippina was born 



here ; that the ruins date from Claudius ; 
that the cathedral was built by Satan, 
and that the Christians have never suc- 
ceeded in finishing it ; that the town-hall 
is a pompous Renaissance structure in 




CHURCH OF THE HOLY APOSTLES AT COLOGNE. 



which you see the busts of the Hanseatic 
commissioners all cast in iron ; that Co- 
logne provides breathing-places for its 
population to the extent of thirty-seven 
public squares — " 

" I suppose, to nullify the seventy-two 
well-defined and several stinks ; but even 
that gives us about two smells to a square, 
with only a couple of perfumes wanting. 
They ought to blow up the Farina estab- 
lishments once a week, all the thirty of 
them, and flood the city with cosmetic 
water. But I, for my part," continued 
Hohenfels, "have been more exercised 
with the ' pavements fanged with mur- 
derous stones.' I have seen all the sights 
while you were watching the slumbers 
of Charles. I have seen St. Cunibert's, 
St. Pantaleon's, and the Holy Apostles'. 
I have seen the tablet on the birthplace 
of Rubens, who, it happens, was really 
born in Siegen. His patroness, Marie 
de Medicis, who gave him the biggest 
order he ever had in his life at the time 



she was adorning the Luxembourg, came 
hither to die — in a garret, they say. I 
have been looking up the scene of her 
death, and I went to the cathedral to see 
the slab under which lies that stiff and 
self-asserting heart which sustained the 
widow so long in a perpetual duel with 
Richelieu." 

" I admire a stout-hearted widow of all 
things. You may go on, Hohenfels." 

"Marie de Medicis," pursued the baron, 
"was rather hard-hearted than stout- 
hearted, I fancy — like one of the mothers- 
in-law you find in Thackeray. On the 
French coins of her regency she has thin 
lips, and a pinched nose that looks as if 
it were red. However, the unfortunate 
soul had her troubles, and crept about 
through England and Holland telling 
the rulers that she was a widow who had 
seen better days." 

" Poor queen !" said I — " poor Ariadne ! 
Go on, my dear Hohenfels. Did they not 
find her a Dionysos and an apotheosis ?" 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



249 



" It appears they only found her a gar- 
ret. Her apotheosis had been painted 
by Rubens. And I will go on, an it 
please you. If you recollect, Flemming, 
when we were lads and you wrote 
a book about us, you gave your- 
self all the eloquent speeches. ,== 
Now that we are grown, and are L^^ 
simply talking for conversation, I pHB 
mean to take my fling." 

" It was only because you were 
such a pump, Hohenfels. Where 
I talked pages you talked oceans. 
If I had undertaken to report you, 
I should have written a library 
instead of a book." 

"I went to see the slab that 
covers her heart, Flemming. 
While I looked a poor match-girl 
entered the cathedral, set down 
her sulphurous basket on the 
heart of Marie de Medicis, said 
a prayer or two, and went out 
absolved. The interior was 
thronged with Christ's poor. 
The scene was a rare one, Paul. 
I looked around me in the gold- 
en altar- lights. I thought I was 
in a forest — a forest at sunset. 
The choir was almost filled with 
rising incense, touched with the 
yellow flare of the tapers, and 
it seemed through the columns 
like a vista into the clouds. The 
grand stems of the arcades rose 
thickly crowded, only they fell 
into a natural order and align- 
ment like the trunks of pines : 
overhead they rolled to meet each other, 
breaking out everywhere into stiff, thick- 
set needles and tufts of Gothic - work. 
Vast patches and shields of prismatic 
hues lay rounded against their mighty 
cylinders. But this forest was not a sol- 
itude : it was crowded with speechless 
figures, thick as thoughts. And it was 
not silent, or simply whisper -haunted, 
like the real woods. It was all inflated 
and swelled and dazzled and broken with 
pomps of organ-music that almost over- 
came the heart, and made the pillars 
seem to reel and the painted windows to 
rock in the Jove-like storm. The beauty 
of the cathedral is that it is not finished. 



A Gothic church ought to be ever grow- 
ing, like the branching laces of the forest. 
If a day should come when we could say, 
It is done, why, then we would seem to say, 




INCOMPLETE GREATNESS. 

It is dead. And that is just the difference 
between the cathedral and the basilica. 
The Northern architecture has in it the 
forest's life and its voice. The Italian ba- 
silica, an immense cube with a triangular 
pediment, is fixed like a crystal, and if 
it is not finished it is unmeaning. Your 
basilica, founded on the old Roman law- 
court, is something arrested and positive. 
Your cathedral, founded on old primitive 
woodland rites, I suppose — what is the 
Gothic founded on, Paul ? — is full of as- 
piration and unachieved desires. The 
former is Authority — the latter, Love." 

This lecture of the baron's, which I 
cannot be accused of cheapening in the 



250 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



recital, occupied us till dusk, and I felt it 
incumbent on myself, as Charles's body- 
servant, to return and see how that wor- 
thy was getting on. He was found at a 
window overlooking the bridge, a bowl 
on his knee containing his second sup- 
per, and his eyes fixed on a cart that was 
going across to Deutz filled with lambs 
tied together — the poor little involuntary 
criminals ! The observation made by 
Charles was that the nourishment in this 
hotel was very good, and that he feared 
he should not be able to leave before 
morning. 

I was burning to attain Marly, where I 
meant, in the security of home, to make 



a full confidant and fellow-plotter of 
Hohenfels, as yet very imperfectly ac- 
quainted with my heart-history in rela- 
tion to the Dark Ladye. We filled in the 
evening with a concert, where the invo- 
lutions of Wagner's compositions allow- 
ed me to dream undisturbed, as you may 
beneath a headless and tailless sermon. 
The most comprehensible morceau was 
the Adelaide, grandly sung by an emi- 
nent tenor, but I spoiled it in the hearing, 
for into its noble polysyllabic continuity 
I was ever trying to fit the two soft ac- 
cents of " Mary." 





■£>J±RT ZIX. 



TYING UP THE CLEWS 




CiESAR S PENNY. 



IN leaving Cologne for Aix-la-Chapelle 
you turn your back to the river — a 
particular which suited my mood well 
enough. The railway bore us away from 
the Rhine-shore at an abrupt angle, and 
in my notion the noble Germanic god- 
dess or image seemed at this point to 
recede with grand theatric strides, like a 
divinity of the stage backing away from 
her admirers over the billowy whirlpool 
of her own skirts. As I dreamed we 
penetrated the tunnel of Konigsdorf, 
which is fifteen hundred yards long, and 



which seemed to me sufficiently pro- 
tracted to contain the slumber of Bar- 
barossa. The thought gave me a useful 
hint, and I fell into a light sleep, while 
Charles and Hohenfels pervaded the 
darkness merely by their perfumes — 
the former with whiffs at a concealed 
bottle of Farina, the latter with a pastille 
counterfeiting the incense of the cathe- 
dral. In a couple of hours from the 
Hotel de Hollande we reached Aachen, 
as the fond natives call the burgh so dear 
to Charlemagne. Deprived of that mag- 

251 



252 



THE NEW IlYrEKION. 



nificent mirror, the Rhine, the pretty 
towns throughout this part of Germany 
seem but like country belles. We should 
hardly have paused at Aix but for the 




HE THRONED CORPSE. 



sake of affording a rest to Charles, who 
grew worse whenever lunch -time com- 
peted with railway-time. As for the dull 
little city, for us it was a wilderness, with 
the blank cleanliness of the desert, ex- 
cept in so far as it was informed and pop- 
ulated by the memory of Charlemagne. 
Here he died, and entered his tomb in 
the church himself had founded. Into 
this sepulchre the emperor Otho III. 
dared to penetrate in the year 997, im- 
pelled by a motive of vile and varlet-like 
curiosity. They say the dead monarch 
confronted his living visitor in the great 
marble chair in which he had been seat- 
ed at his own command, haughty and 
inflexible as in life, the ivory sceptre in 
his ivory fingers, his white skull crowned 
with the diadem of gold. The peeping 



emperor looked upon him with awe, half 
afraid of the mysterious and penetrating 
shadows that reached forth out of his 
rayless eyes. Before he left, however, he 
peered about, touched the scep- 
tre and the throne, fingered this 
and that, and having, as it were, 
trimmed the nails and combed 
the beard of the great spectre, re- 
tired with a valet's bow. Observ- 
ing that Charlemagne had lost 
most of his nose, he caused it to 
be replaced in gold very delicate- 
ly chiseled and enchased. The 
sacrilege was repeated by Fred- 
erick Barbarossa in 1165, who 
went farther and forced Charle- 
magne to get up from his chair 
before him. The corpse, in ris- 
ing, fell in pieces, which have 
been dispersed through Europe 
as relics. We saw such of them 
as remain here at the Chapelle. I 
was allowed, for about the equiv- 
alent of an American dollar, to 
measure the Occidental emperor's 
leg — they call it his arm. And 
then, as a makeweight in the bar- 
gain, the venal sacristan placed 
in my hands the head of Charle- 
magne. 

I thought Hohenfels would have 
sunk to the ground with disgust. 
He colored deeply and dragged 
me into the air. "I am ashamed 
of every drop of German blood in my 
veins," he cried. "What are we to think 
of the commerce of these wretches, for 
whom the very wounds of Caesar are the 
lips of a money-box ?" 

I had given back the skull, as Hamlet 
returns the skull of Yorick to the grave- 
digger, and was dusting my fingers with 
a handkerchief, as hundreds of Ham- 
lets have dusted theirs. I said, " ' Thrift, 
thrift, Horatio.' " 

" At Kreutzberg there are twenty monks 
on the counter ! This morning, at St. 
Ursula's, it was the eleven thousand 
virgins, their skulls ranged like Dutch 
cheeses above our heads or in rows 
around the walls, with a battery-full of 
them in the neighboring apartment, like 
a cheesemonger's reserved magazine. 



THE NEW HYPERION 



53 



Here, the very leader of modern ideas, 
the creator of our form of civilization, is 
shown for so many pennies to any gro- 
cer who wants to weigh the 
head of a king ! Profanation ! 
Barbarians! Philistines!" 

I turned rather hastily, 
while my hands were yet 
clammy with the skull, think- 
ing that this accusation of 
Philistinism was aimed at me. 
But Hohenfels thought of 
nothing less than of a per- 
sonality, being in his cloud- 
iest mood of generalization. 
So I only concealed the hand- 
kerchief, while I said, as easily 
as I might, "You need not 
accuse your German blood, 
for I have lived long enough 
in my American's Paradise to 
know that civilized Paris is 
considerably worse in this 
particular respect, with the 
addition of a certain goblin 
levity particularly French. 
How often have I seen babies 
frightened by the skulls in 
the dentists' windows, with 
their cynical chewing action ! 
It is said that a child sat next 
a dentist's apprentice once in 
an omnibus, and was observed 
to turn rigid, fixed and white, 
but unable to speak : he had 
sat on one of these skulls, and it had 
bitten him. Silver -mounted skulls set 
as goblets, in imitation of Byron, are 
to be seen at any of the china - shops 
rubbing against the chaste cheeks of 
the old maid's teacup. Skeletons are 
sold, bleached and with gilded hinges, 
to the medical students, who buy the 
pale horrors as openly as meerschaum 
pipes. Have I not often found young 
Grandstone supping among his doctors' 
apprentices of the Ober restaurant after 
theatre-hours, a skeleton in the corner 
filled with umbrellas like a hall - rack, 
and crowned with the triple or quintuple 
tiara of the girls' best bonnets? Ay, Mi- 
mi Pinson's cap has known what it is to 
perch on the bony head of Death. The 
juxtaposition is but an emblem. The 



sewing -girl, like Hood's shirtmaker, 
scarcely fears the ' phantom of grisly 
bone.' Poor Francine ! where have you 




taken _y<?wr artisanne's cap to, I wonder? 
Are you left alone, all alone again, and 
thinking of the pretty solitude you have 
left behind you at Carlsruhe ? Who uses 
those polished keys now ?" 

Hohenfels interrupted me, complain- 
ing that my monologue was uninterest- 
ing and diffuse, and was interfering with 
the railway time-table. But I finished it 
in the car: "And the railway! What 
has a person of fixed and independent 
habits to do with railways but to growl 
at them ? Before I was tempted upon 
the railway by that impertinent engineer 
at Noisy, I got up and sat down when I 
liked, ate wholesome food at my own 
hours, and was contented at home. Con- 
fusion to him who made me the victim 
of his engineering calculations ! Con- 



254 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



fusion to Grandstone and his nest of ser- 
pents at Epernay ! Did they not intro- 
duce me to Fortnoye, who has doubly 
destroyed my peace ? Where are the 



conspirators, that I may pulverize them 
with my maledictions?" 

This question — which Hohenfels called 
peevish as he buried himself in his book 




— was not answered until we had passed 
Verviers, Chaudfontaine and Liege. I was 
aroused from a sulky slumber in the sta- 
tion at Brussels by Hohenfels, who said, 
in his musical scolding way, like the busy 
wheeze of a clicking music-box, "You 
may say what you like, with your left- 
handed flatteries, in regard to Fortnoye, 
and you may praise Ariadnes and wid- 
ows to the end of the chapter. You are 
sorry at this moment not to be at Eper- 
nay to see the destroyer of your peace 
married : you had rather assist at the 
making of a wife than at the making of 
a widow." 

I was just sending Fortnoye to the 
gloomiest shades of Acheron when a 
strong hand entered the carriage-door, 
helped me handsomely down the steps, 
and then began warmly to shake my own. 
Fortnoye ! — Fortnoye in flesh and blood 
was before me. While my mouth was yet 
filled with maledictions he began to pour 
out a storm of thanks with all his own 
particular warmth, expressing the most 
effusive gratitude for the trouble I had 
taken in forsaking my route to be his 



wife's bridesmaid. That is what he call- 
ed it. "She has but one other," said 
Fortnoye. At the same time I began to 
recognize other faces not unknown to me, 
crudely illuminated by the raw colors of 
the railway-lights. They all had black 
wedding -suits and enormous buttonhole 
nosegays of orange - flowers. I picked 
them out, with a particular recognition for 
each : 'twas the civil engineer of Noisy ; 
the short gentleman named Somerard ; 
James Athanasius Grandstone, with his 
saintly aureole upon him in the shape 
of a Yankee wide-awake ; the nameless 
mutes, or rather chorus, of the cham- 
pagne-crypt; in short, my nest of ser- 
pents in all its integrity. Still entangled 
with my slumbers, I hesitated to respond 
to the friendly hands that were every- 
where thrust centripetally toward me. 

I looked blackly at Hohenfels. He 
was chuckling. 

At Heidelberg, making the acquaint- 
ance of M. Fortnoye contemporaneously 
with my departure, he had become more 
enthralled than he ever confessed to this 
radiant traveler — whom he called a 



THE NEW HYPER I OX. 



255 



packman, but regarded as a Mercury — 
and his pretty scheme of matrimony in 
motion. Even now, if I can believe my 
eyes, he goes up to the " vintner " and 
"peddler" of his objurgations, and meek- 
ly whispers into his ear with the air of a 
conspirator reporting a plot to his chief. 
Having engaged to produce me at the 
wedding of Fortnoye, and finding me 
unexpectedly recusant, he had adopted 
a little stratagem for bringing me to the 
scene while thinking to escape from it. 

"Thou too, Brutus!" I said, and gave 
it up. It only remained for me to return 
all round, after five minutes of petrified 
stupidity, the hand-grasps that had been 
offered from every quarter of the com- 
pass-box. 

Next morning, at an early hour, I was 
interrupted by a knock, just as Charles 
had buttoned my gaiters and the young 
man from the perruquier's (who had 
stolen in with that air of delicacy and of 
almost literary refinement which belongs 
to his gentle profession) had lathered 
me. A nick he gave my chin at the 
shock made my countenance all argent 
and gules, and the visitor entering saw 
me thus emblazoned, while the barber 
and Charles, "like two wild men sup- 
porters of a shield," could only stare at 
the untimely apparition. 

" Do you know him, Charles ?" I asked, 
not recognizing my guest, and putting 
over my painted face a mask of wet tow- 
eling. 

"I know him intimately," replied my 
jester-in-ordinary: " I would thank Mon- 
sieur Paul just to tell me his name. Do 
you remember, monsieur, a sort of beg- 
gar, with a wagon and a stylish horse 
and a pretty wife, who limped a bit with 
his right hand, or perhaps his left hand ? 
Does monsieur know what I mean ? He 
used to come and see us at Passy ; and 
monsieur even had some traffic with him 
in a little matter of two chickens." 

"Father Joliet!" I cried. 

"Present!" shouted the personage thus 
designated at my appeal to his name. 
I turned round, toweled, and he grasped 
my hands. The unusual hour, appropri- 
ate as I supposed only to some porter 
or other stipendiary visitor of my hotel, 



caused to shine out with startling reful- 
gence the morning splendors in which 
Papa Joliet had arrayed himself. He 
wore a courtly dress, appropriate to the 




PERRUQUIER. 

most formal possible ceremony ; his black 
suit was glossy ; his hat was glossy ; his 
varnished pumps were more than glossy 
— they were phosphorescent. Gloves only 
were wanting to his honest hands. 

Soaped, napkined and generally ex- 
tinguished, I could only stammer, " You 
here in Brussels ? What a droll meet- 
ing!" 

"Wherefore droll?" asked Joliet, with 
a huge surprise, which lasted him all 
through his next sentence. "I come 
here to marry my daughter. Everything 
is ready ; we count on your presence at 
the wedding; the lawyer has drawn up 
the contract ; and the breakfast is now 
cooking at the best restaurant in the 
place." 

" Francine's wedding, my dear Joliet !" 
I exclaimed. And, going back to my 
apprehensions at her furtive disappear- 
ance from Carlsruhe, and to my conjec- 
tures of some amorous mystery between 
her and her Yankee traducer, Kraaniff, 
I added gravely, "It is very creditable !" 



256 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



" How, creditable — and droll ?" repeat- 
ed the honest man, evidently much sur- 
prised at my own accumulating surprises. 
" Did not you hear?" 

"Not the faintest word," I said, "but I 
am none the less gratified to find this 




FATHER JOLIET. 

affair ending, as it should, in the presence 
of a lawyer. As for your wedding-invi- 
tation, my good friend, you are a little 
tardy in delivering it, for it is exactly to- 
day that I am obliged to attend at the 
marriage of one of my friends, M. Fort- 
noye." 

"Ah, that is a good joke !" cried Joliet, 
breaking into an explosion of laughter 
and clapping me pleasantly on the shoul- 
der — an action which caused a slight 
frown on the -part of Charles. "You 
always would have your jest, Monsieur 
the American ! Tease me and scare me 
as much as you like : I like these hoaxes 
better before a wedding than after. Hold 
that," he added, extending his hand as 
if it were a piece of merchandise. 

I "held" it, and he went on, dwelling 
slowly on his words : " If you are at Henri 
Fortnoye's wedding you will be at Fran- 
cine Joliet's also, for both of these per- 
sons are to be married at one church." 



"Impossible!" I exclaimed, dropping 
the hand and stepping back. 

"What ! again ?" said Joliet, his man- 
ly face visibly darkening. " Droll ! and 
creditable ! and impossible ! Why im- 
possible ?" Then he dropped his head 
and looked angrily at the floor. "Ah, 
yes, even you," he said, his eyes still fix- 
ed on the boards, "believed that a French 
girl, trained as French girls are trained, 
would flirt and expose herself to remark ; 
and all on account of such a man as 
your compatriot, the other American ! 
Well ! well ! you ought to know your 
countrymen best." 

"I know of no harm," I interposed 
hastily. " I should always have thought 
Kraaniff hard to swallow as a mere mat- 
ter of taste. I can but recollect, Father 
Joliet," I went on more seriously, "that 
the last time I met you you begged me 
not to talk of Francine if I would not 
break your heart. I have to add to this 
the news brought me from Heidelberg, 
that this Kraaniff was a serpent who 
had fascinated some young girl for an 
approaching meal. — How dare you, 
Charles," I cried suddenly, recalled to 
the consciousness of his presence by 
this souvenir of his oratory, "stand here 
staring ? Show the young man out di- 
rectly, and pay him." 

I will not answer for Charles's having 
got much farther away than the door. 
Joliet continued: "But his aunt knows 
him now for what he is. Kraaniff, say 
you ? I call him Kranich, though he 
had better change his baptismal record 




THE CATECHISM. 



than disgrace one of the best nam~s m 
Brussels." 

" Frau Kranich, then, my old friend, is 
really his aunt?" 

"Madame Kranich, whom I have 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



257 



known in your parlor, is really Fran- 
cine's godmother. Did you never know 
of all her secret kindness ? That rigid 
lady would commit a perjury to deny 
one of her own good actions. Young 
Kranich has written her a letter con- 
fessing his lies. Don't you know ? 
The very same day when you were 
determined to fight him in a duel — " 

"Certainly, certainly," I said, a little 
confused. "We will change the sub- 
ject and leave my ferocity alone. Let 
us understand one another. In regard 
to Fortnoye's marriage, was there not 
some talk of a Madame Ashburleigh ?" 

" I believe you. Madame Ashbur- 
leigh is the very key of the manoeuvre. 
Madame Ashburleigh — don't you per- 
ceive ? — lost a child." ^ 

" For that matter, she has lost four. 
I know the lady confidentially, and 
she told me their histories and pres- 
ent address. Lucia lies in Glasgow, 
Hannibal at Nice, and Waterloo sleeps 
somewhere hereabout, as well as an- 
other nameless little dear." 

"She is a good woman. She has 
collected all her proofs, and has come 
hither with them voluntarily — has per- 
haps already arrived. Brussels, where 
two of her marmots rest, is one of her 
most frequent stations. That censori- 
ous Madame Kranich made a scene, but 
she had to yield to conviction." 

"A censorious Madame Kranich ! Is 
the young duelist married?" 

"What? No, no! It is Francine's 
guardian I speak of. Of late years she 
has become a sort of Puritan abbess, 
seeking the Protestant society which 
abounds in Belgium, and lamenting her 
husband, whom they say she used to 
drug with opium." 

"Then is she not Kranich's aunt?" 

"Oh yes, an aunt by marriage ; but he 
is not her nephew : I will die before I 
call him so." 

" Listen," said I, "Father Joliet. You 
are as full of information as an oracle, 
but you are not coherent. This month 
past I have been hunting down a chi- 
msra, a hydra with a dozen heads : each 
head shows me by turn the portrait of 
Fortnoye, or Francine, or yourself, or 
17 



Kranich, or Mrs. Ashburleigh. Ever 
since Noisy I have been meandering 
through the folds of a mystery. My 




FRAU KRANICH. 



head is turning with it. If you want to 
save me from distraction, sit down in 
this chair and answer me a long cate- 
chism, without saying a word but in re- 
ply to my questions." 

" I am sure I talk as plain as a pro- 
fessor. Look ! You frightened me at 
first with your doubts and your impos- 
sibilities. You have only to make Kra- 
nich's aunt agree with Francine's guard- 
ian, and at the same time forgive Fran- 
cine's husband for having assumed the 
undertaker's bill for Madame Ashbur- 
leigh's baby." 

"Yes, yes, my dear Joliet, you are 
clearer than Euclid." And I adminis- 
tered a category of questions. Joliet, 
with his fatherly joy bursting out of him 
in the longest of parentheses, kept quiet 
in his refulgent shoes and answered as 
well as he could. 

Francine, he protested, had never beer 



258 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



a flirt (I have met no Frenchmen who 
were ignorant of that one English word, 
to which they give a new value by pro- 
nouncing it in a very orotund manner, 
as flort). When she came to be ten 




" TO MY ARMS," 

or twelve, Frau Kranich — until then a 
well-preserved lioness with an appetite 
for society — ceased to give her dolls and 
promised to give her an education. At 
the same time, the banker's widow left 
Paris, and repaired with her charge to 
Brussels, where the little girl received 
some good half-Jesuitical, half-English 
schooling, of the kind suggested in the 
Bronte novels. Her diploma attained, 
Francine begged to accompany her Eng- 
lish teacher back to London : she wished 
to become a meess, she said, and be com- 
petent to teach like a new Hypatia. She 
had hardly bidden her kind protectress 
adieu when Frau Kranich's nephew ar- 
rived at Brussels, exceedingly dissatisfied 
with his American business in the bar- 
rooms of the grand duke of Mississippi. 
A sordid jealousy of Mademoiselle Joliet's 
claims upon his aunt took possession of 
this prudent spirit. He took up a watch- 
post at a university town on the Rhine. 
He began to whisper vague exaggera- 
tions of her coquetries and liveliness, 
which the Protestant circle that revolved 
about Madame Kranich did not fail to 
bear in to her. This lady admired her 
nephew, sure that his want of manners 



was the sign of a noble frankness. She 
wrote to Francine, bidding her come im- 
mediately from London. The girl not 
replying, the hopeful nephew was put 
upon her track. He went away. His 
letters from England reported that Fran- 
cine was no longer in that country, but 
was probably come back to Belgium. 
"I know not in what suburb of Brussels 
our very independent miss may this in- 
stant be hiding," he wrote. 

About the same time, in the circle of 
French exiles at Brussels, a young ro- 
mantiquc named Fortnoye was reported 
as weeping and lavishing statues over the 
grave of an unknown infant in the church- 
yard at Laaken. It was a delicious mys- 
tery. Kind meddlers approached the 
sexton, who said that all he knew of the 
babe's mother was that she was a beau- 
tiful lady from London. Kranich car- 
ried the story dutifully to his aunt, add- 
ing his own ingenious surmise: "Can 
Francine have become sufficiently Angli- 
cised to contract secret marriages with 
roving revolutionists, and scamper about 
the country with ardent young French- 
men in the style of Gretna Green ?" In 
fact, it was really from London that Mrs. 
Ashburleigh was proceeding, for the pur- 
pose of taking care, in the Rhenish city 
where he was dying, of her handsome, 
dissipated, worthless husband. Taken 
suddenly ill at Brussels, she left her in- 
fant to the unequaled chill of a strange, 
unknown cemetery, hastening thence 
with tears and despair to the bedside 
where duty called her. 

Has my reader forgotten the dim, tear- 
swollen story which I heard — not at all 
improved in the telling — from my gen- 
erous young friend Grandstone — how an 
impulsive Frenchman had laid to rest, 
in flowers and evergreens, the unnamed 
baby of a woman he had never seen ? 
Jealous as I was of Fortnoye, I never 
could think without tenderness of this 
singular action. To make the tomb of 
this helpless Innocence the young man 
braved the curiosity of his comrades — 
despised the rumor, the obloquy, and, 
hardest of all, the jests. Well has the 
wise dramatist decided that Ophelia must 
needs be laid in Yorick's bed 1 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



259 



Poor Francine, gay, frivolous, inno 
cently vain of her little travesty of Eng 
lish behavior, found her accomplish- 
ments and graces received by her 
guardian's circle with incomprehen- 
sible coldness. Hurt and humiliated, 
she asked to pay a visit to her father. 
The honest rustic received her with a 
miserable confusion of doubt and se- 
verity, for her escapade to England 
had never pleased him, and her re- 
turn from her godmother's home wore 
to him the air of a repudiation. At 
her father's house, however, she was 
discovered by Fortnoye, who had 
never heard the ingenious Kranich's 
theory of his own private wedding 
with Francine, and who thought to 
find in her the veiled unknown of the 
cemetery. He saw for the first time, 
in the flowery home at Noisy, that 
fresh ingenuous beauty, a little over- 
cast with disappointment. His gen- ^ 
erous nature was touched ; and, with 
his talent for administration and plan- 
ning, he conceived the idea of estab- 
lishing Francine in the pretty bird's 
nest -at Carlsruhe, distant alike from 
the strongholds of her calumniators, 
Belgium and France. 

Fortnoye now had an object in life. 
"There is a very young person in the 
cemetery of Laaken who is much in need 
of a chaperone," he said. The frank 
proofs of his own relations with this 
churchyard would not only do credit to 
his own reputation, but would gratify the 
best friends of Mademoiselle Joliet and 
at least one other lady. To attain these 
proofs he had to step over the coiling, 
writhing bodies of a whole nest of ru- 
mors. When he seized by the throat 
the especial slander that he himself was 
the husband of the babe's mother, he 
found written on its crest the signature 
of John Kranich. He sought the aunt. 
This lady gave him several interviews, 
the Lutheran prayer-book for ever in her 
hand. " Why does the dear girl not come 
to me ?" she would say, weeping, but 
she refused to hear a word against her 
precious nephew, the personification of 
bluff frankness. As if to make crushing 
him impossible, young Kranich had now 



withdrawn to America, leaving his rep- 
utation in that best possible protection, 




THE FUTURE OF FFARINA. 



the chivalry that is extended toward the 
absent. Fortnoye was baffled. " I will 
ask the baby at its tomb for its mother's 
and father's name," he cried. In the 
pretty God's Acre he found a fresh har- 
vest of flowers and a new statue over 
the well-known grave. It was a pretty 
miniature of Thorwaldsen's Psyche, on 
which the proud copyist had inscribed 
his name. A respectful correspondence 
with Mrs. Ashburleigh, to whom he was 
guided by the sculptor, and who was now 
taking the waters at Wildbad, soon put 
the whole tangled story to rights. Fort- 
noye had the happiness of conducting 
Francine, by this time his affianced wife, 
to the good Frau Kranich, who, con- 
vinced that she had wrongly judged her, 
threw her arms ardently around her re- 
covered jewel, letting the eternal little 
book fly from her hand like a projectile. 
"But the most singular part of the 
story," concluded Father Joliet, "is the 



260 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



letter which Fortnoye, after two or three 
quarrels, forced out of young Kranich 
when the latter had returned to Europe, 
full of triumph and debts, to take pos- 
session of his aunt for the rest of his 
life. Here it is," added the good man, 
opening a pocket-book. "The hand- 
writing is drunken, but the sense is clear 
as Seltzer-water. The scholars tell me 
in vino Veritas est, but it appears to me 
that truth really comes out in the repent- 
ance and headache that follow." 

" My dear Aunt " (ran the letter which 
Charles had seen forced from the alliga- 
tor after his unlucky game of dominoes) : 



"You have known me as the soul of 
candor. It is this happy quality which 
compels me to state (for I am something 
of a Rousseau) that if I ever playfully 
accused your pretty pet Francine of be- 
ing a flirt, I knew nothing about it. The 
best proof is that she absolutely refused 
to join her expectations with mine, though 
I am something of an Adonis. If you 
believed that she and the wine-peddler 
had made a match, I pity your credulity 
and ignorance of human nature. I am 
certain that neither the peddler nor my- 
self would touch the enterprise until you 
had shown exactly what you would (pe- 
cuniarily) do. For my part, I have act- 




HOHENFELS FAILURE. 



ed throughout on the most exact and ad- 
vanced scientific principles. Intending 
to modify the spirit-trade in America, 
and especially to introduce the exclusive 
agency of the Farina essences, I found 
that the sinew particularly needed for this 
leap was capital. Desiring to absorb your 
bounties toward Francine, I at first pro- 
posed matrimony. This offer was made 
without any enmity toward the girl, as 
my next move was without affection, 
though it seems to be resulting to her 
benefit. I became her accuser as coolly 
as I had been her lover. Passion has 
nothing to do with the combinations of 
strategic genius : I am something of a 
Washington. My theory of her clandes- 
tine marriage was one of the most mas- 
terly fictions of the age — a plot worthy 
of Thackeray. If I could have succeed- 
ed in mutilating the statue in the grave- 



yard, I might have carried it, while you 
would have admired my act of icono- 
clasm with all your Puritan nature. In 
the momentary abandonment of my 
plans, owing to the machinations of my 
enemies, you will conceive that I am not 
very rich. My college-debts and other 
expenses I am obliged to leave for your 
kind attention. The main point of this 
letter, which M. Fortnoye has persuaded 
me to set down as distinctly as in my 
present feeble state I can, is that Fran- 
cine is a pretty little maid who has nev- 
er passed by Gretna Green. There ! that 
is my credo, and I will subscribe to it, 
"Your loving nephew, John. 

" P. S. Address, with such an enclosure 
as your generosity will prompt, Jean K. 
Ffarina, sole representative and cos- 
metical chemist in America on behalf of 
the Farinas of Cologne, at New Orleans, 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



261 



where I am going to beat my adversa- 
ries like Old Hie — " 

At this point the tipsy scrawl became 
illegible. 

" This is not a very handsome apology. 
Did Fortnoye accept it?" I asked, turn- 
ing over the clammy and mal- 
odorous epistle. At this inquiry 
the crack of the door widened and 
Charles appeared, on fire with en- 
thusiasm, and so possessed with 
self-importance that he forgot the 
betrayal of his indiscretion. 

" I can reply to that question," 
said Charles. "When M. Fort- 
noye received the paper from the 
duelist he read it over and said, 
'You have meant to impose on 
me, monsieur, with an incomplete 
confession. But, in return for your 
imperfect restoration of Made- 
moiselle Joliet's portrait, you have 
unconsciously set down such a 
masterpiece of yourself that I am 
certain your aunt will see you as 
she never did before.' " 

Charles, having thus added him- 
self to our cabal without rebuke, 
took a lively interest in what fol- 
lowed. The proud father contin- 
ued : " My son-in-law, after some 
business preliminaries, wrote me a 
handsome letter demanding what he had 
already effectively possessed himself of. 
I wrote to Francine, already returned to 
her duties, to be a good girl and make 
her husband obey her in all things." 

"That may have been," said I, "what 
made Francine take to laughing all day 
and all night, as I heard she did some 
little time after my departure from her 
house. The next news of her," I pur- 
sued, "was that she had been spirited 
away by some sly old kidnapper. I 
almost suspected Kranich." 

"The old kidnapper," said Joliet, laugh- 
ing heartily at the compliment, "is the 
man now talking to you. I wanted to 
take Francine to her godmother. I turn- 
ed the key in the door at Carlsruhe, set 
the geographers all upon their travels to 
explore new worlds, and we have been 
living ever since quite close to Ma- 



dame Kranich, who treats me like an 
emperor." 

It was easy now to understand why 
the young Kranich, as soon as he could 
identify me as a protector of Francine, 
had been thrown off his guard and tempt- 
ed to attack me with his clumsy abuse. 




READING THE CONTRACT. 

It was not very mysterious, even, why 
he had wished all handsome girls to be 
drowned in the Rhine. For him a pret- 
ty damsel was simply a rival in trade. 

Had I stopped at Wildbad with the 
party of orpheonists, I should have en- 
countered rather sooner the fatal beau- 
ties of Mary Ashburleigh. It was to 
meet her that Fortnoye had paused at 
that resort, considering her introduction 
to Frau Kranich almost indispensable 
to the success of his scheme. She had 
no hesitation in following the protecting 
angel of her lost child. "My object in 
this journey is a happy marriage," she 
had told me when to my unworthy care 
her guardianship had been transferred. 
If I timorously suspected the marriage 
to be her own, whose fault was it but 
mine ? My heart leaped up at the suc- 
cessive stages of this recital, its hopes 



262 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



confirmed by every additional fact : the 
Dark Ladye's hand was certainly free. 
Fortnove, I should surmise, was not too 




INTERRUPTED REPOS 



desirous to abandon this magnificent 
companion at Schwetzingen ; but the 
serpent, he knew, was left behind, in 
company with two or three of his and 
my friends : it was necessary to take the 
youth by the ear, as it were, and dismiss 
him from the country, without loss of 
time, to his future of counter-jumping. 
His dueling experience may be of some 
use to him among the bowie-knives of 
Louisiana. If his subsequent path is 
not strewn with roses, let him rejoice 
that it is at least lubricated with cologne- 
water. 

An hour had passed, and into my 
room from his own adjoining one now 
ambled amicably my friend the baron. 
He greeted Joliet as an old friend. Many 
a smoking-match had they had in my 
garden at Marly. But Hohenfels this 
morning was in robes of state, with shoes 
that shone even beside old Father Joliet's, 
and as a concession to elegance he had 
abandoned his cavernous pipes in favor 
of cigarettes. A scroll of this descrip- 
tion, flavored with his Cologne pastille 
and very badly rolled, was trying to ex- 
hale itself between his lips. 

"What a genius for conversation you 
have to-day, my Flemming ! This hour 
I have rocked back and forth in bed, 
trying to understand your observations 
or to cover my ears and go to rest. 
Your tongue has been like the tongue of 
a monastery-bell summoning all hands to 



penance." But I had hardly spoken ten 
consecutive words. The ears of the bar- 
on were this corning quite muffled, I 
think, with the abundance of his hair, 
which he had evidently been dressing 
with an avalanche of soap and water, 
for the topknot was as harsh and tight 
>> as a felt. He had lemon-blossoms on 
^ his lappel and lemon kids on his fists. 
^ It was then I remembered that my 
\ bags were all in the steamer, where 
I had left them when surprised by 
Charles's indisposition. My tin box 
; would possibly yield me a button- 
j nosegay, but otherwise I might beat 
my breast, like the wedding-guest in 
the Ancient Mariner, for I heard the 
summons and was unable to attend 
in right attire. "We two must take 
you out in the street and dress you," said 
Hohenfels. 

Although I had never been dressed in 
the street, I yielded. It was a grand pub- 
lic holiday, and the sounds of festivity, 
which had floated into my chamber with 
the entrance of Hohenfels, were in full 
cadence outside. Everybody was pour- 
ing out to the city-gate, or returning from 
thence, where, in honor of some visit 
from the king of the Belgians and count 
and' countess of Flanders, a festival was 
going on in imitation or rehearsal of the 
grand annual kermesse. These festivals, 
retained in Belgium 
with a delightful fidel- 
ity to the customs of 
antique Brabant, 
would fit the brush of 
Teniers better than 
the pen of a mere be- 
wildered tourist. Still, 
I will try, copying prin- 
cipally from the re- 
ports of Charles (who 
contrives to peep at 
everything, with an 
interest whose amount 
is in ratio with the ^^~^~-~ *~ 
square of his distance COA1 ^ VSm coats. 
from his master), to 
give a few features of the scene, which 
he spread in detail before the attentive 
Josephine during many an evening after. 
The principal fair-ground — though the 




THE NEW HYPERION. 



263 



occasion crammed the whole city with 
revelers — was just outside the gate. It 
was a veritable town in miniature, with 
a pattern of checker-board streets — Col- 
umbine street, Polichinelle street, Avenue 
des Parades, Place des Parades, Street of 
the Chanson, and the like. There were 
more than five hundred booths, all num- 
bered — shops and restaurants. There 
were the Salon Curtius, the Menagerie 
Bidel, the Bal Mabille, the Cafe Bataclan, 
the American Tavern. From one of the 
little costumers' shops, Charles — with a 
higher evincement of antiquarian taste 
than I should have expected — managed 
to bear away a pattern of wall-paper, 
which I afterward conferred on Mary 
Ashburleigh with great applause : it was 
Parisian of 1824, the epoch of Charles 
Dix, and was entirely covered with gi- 
raffes in honor of that puissant and ele- 
gant monarch. The above establish- 
ments were near the entrance, to the 
right. 

At the left were more attractions: an- 
other menagerie, a heap of ostensible 
gold representing the five milliards paid 
by France, a gallery of astonished wax 
soldiers representing the Franco-Prussian 
war, a cook-shop with "mythologic" con- 
fectionery. Farther on, in the Theatre 
Casti, was exposed the "renowned buf- 
foon Peppino," breveted by His Majesty 
the " king of Egypt ;" then came the Chi- 
arini Theatre ; then the Theatre Adrien 
Delille, an enchantingly pretty structure, 
where receptions were given by a little 
creature who should have sat under a 
microscope: she was "the Princess Fe- 
licia, aged thirteen, born at Clotat, near 
Marseilles, weighing three kilogrammes 
and measuring forty-six centimetres — a 
ravishing figure, admirably proportioned 
in her littleness and tout a fait sympa- 
thique" 

The announcements were heard, it was 
thought by Charles, to the very centre 
of the city. A low-browed animal with 
rasped hair was shouting, " Messieurs 
and ladies, come and see — come and 
see the theatre of the galleys ! The only 
one in the world ! This is the place to 
view the real instruments of torture used 
on the prisoners — chains four yards long 



and balls of thirty-five pounds. All au- 
thentic, gentlemen and ladies. You will 
see the poisoners of Marseilles, Grosjon 
who killed his father, Madame Cottin 




THE JESTER AT THE FEAST. 

who ate her baby. Come in, come in, 
gentlemen and ladies ! Fifteen centimes ! 
'Tis given away ! You enter and go out 
when you like. Come in ! It is educa- 
tional : you see vice and crime depicted 
on the faces of the criminals !" 

In another place a malicious Flemish 
Figaro explained the analogy betwen een 
sftimiekop and eene meisie, the perspi- 
ration streaming over his face ; and my 
ancient minnesinger's blood stirred with- 
in me at the report of the pleasantries 
which were improvised by this Rabelais 
of the people, and I remembered that I 
too was a Flemming. 

The bands belonging to the different 
booths tried to play each other down, 
forming a stupefying charivari, with trib- 
utary processions that quite overflowed 
the city. The house of "confections" 
yielded me no broadcloth of a cut or di- 
mension suitable to my figure. But my 
two friends chose me a hat, a light pale- 
tot (my second purchase in that sort on 
this eventful journey), a scented cambric 
handkerchief, a rosebud, and a snowy 
waistcoat, in which, as in a whited sepul- 
chre, I concealed the decay of my toilet. 
These changes were judged to be suffi- 
cient for my accoutrement. They might 
have done very well, but on my way 
back I paused at a lace-shop window to 
inspect some present for Francine. A 
band, with many banners and figures in 



264 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



masquerade, swept past, followed by a 
shouting crowd. My friends lost me in 
a moment, and I lost my way. I turned 
into a street which I was sure led to the 




... : Mill 1'1,'H 



ST. GUDULE. BRUSSELS. 



hotel, gave it up for another, lost that 
in a blind alley, and finally brought up 
in a steep, narrow canon, where I was 
forced to ask a direction. The passer- 
by who obliged me was a man bearing 
a bag of charcoal. He answered with a 
ready intelligence that did honor to his 
heart and his sense of Progressive Geog- 
raphy. But he left on my white waist- 
coat, alas ! a charcoal sketch, full of 
chiaroscuro and coloris, representing his 
index-finger surrounded with a sort of 
cloud-effect. My waistcoat had to be 
given over in favor of the elder garment 
buttoned up in the all-concealing over- 
coat. 

The ceremonies of the day, I soon 
found, were to consist in an early and 
informal breakfast at the house of Frau 
Kranich ; then the civil wedding at the 
mayor's office, followed by the usual 
church-service, from which the Protest- 
ant godmother of Francine begged to be 
excused ; the day to wind up with a gen- 
eral dinner at a place of resort outside 
the city at four o'clock, the usual dining- 
hour in old Brabant. 

The early breakfast gave a renewal 
of my friendship with good Frau Kra- 
nich and a glimpse of the bride, with her 
sweet, patient, dewy face shadowed like 
a honey-drop in the gauzy calyx of her 



artisanne cap ; for she was in the sim- 
plest of morning dresses — something 
gray, with a clean white apron. The 
quaint, old-fashioned house where we 
met was decorated with 
^ exquisite trifles, the me- 

morials of the mistress's 
old fashionable taste, but 
scattered over the tables 
also were lecture pro- 
grammes, hospital reports 
and photographs of emi- 
nent philosophers. As I 
took up for a plaything a 
gold pen-case, well used, 
which rested on a mag- 
nificent old fan, the Kra- 
nich said, with just a rem- 
iniscence of her former 
vivacity, "You find me 
much changed, Mr. Flem- 
ming. I used to be the 
grasshopper in the fable — now I am the 
ant." 

"I bless any change, ma'am," said I, 
"which increases your kindness toward 
this charming girl." 

"Dear Mr. Flemming," said pretty 
Francine, "how nice and shabby you 
look ! You will do admirably to stand by 
a poor girl — so poor that she has hardly 
a bridesmaid. I hope you are as indi- 
gent as you were at Carlsruhe." Upon 
this I felt very fatherly, and clasped her 
waist from behind as I kissed her fore- 
head. 

The lawyer, a professionally bland old 
man, with a porous bald head like an 
emu's egg, said as he was introduced, 
"Ah, I have heard of you before, mon- 
sieur. You are the man of the two chick- 
ens." 

Joliet was so enchanted with this rare 
joke, laughing and clapping all his near- 
er neighbors on the back, that I could 
not but accept it graciously. For this 
exceptional day, at least, I must bear my 
eternal nickname. Was not the maid 
now present whose dower had been 
hatched by those well -omened fowls? 
and was not the dower now coming to 
use ? Hohenfels paired off with the no- 
tary, and discussed with that parchment 
person the music of Mozart, and, what 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



265 



would have been absurd and incredible 
in any Anglo-Saxon country, the scribe 
understood it ! 

Our party had to wait but ten minutes 
for the groom and his men. Fortnoye, 
in a grand blue suit, 
with a wondrous daz- 
zle of frilling on his 
broad chest, looked a 
noble husband, but 
was preoccupied and 
silent. His chorus sup' 
ported him — Grand- 
stone, Somerard, my 
engineer and the oth- 
ers — in dignified black 
clothes, official bou- 
tonnieres and cere- 
monial cravats: they 
greeted Frau Kranich 
with awe, and bowed 
before the polished 
head of the lawyer 
with the parallelism of 
ninepins. My little group of fellow-trav- 
elers was almost complete. The young 
duelist, of course, was not expected or 
wanted. The Scotch doctor, Somerard 
told me, had been obliged to fly to Lon- 
don, where a mammoth meeting of the 
homoeopathic faith was in progress. 

The great feature of the breakfast came 
on when every crumb of breakfast had 
been eaten. Charles and the maid clear- 
ed away the table, and the notary stood 
up to read the marriage contract. The 
reading, ordinarily a dull affair, was in 
this instance vivified by curious incidents. 
In the first place, Frau Kranich, amend- 
ing the injustice her over -credulity had 
caused, gave her protegee a wedding-pres- 
ent of twenty thousand francs, accom- 
panying the gift with some singularly tart 
remarks about her nephew : this sum was 
increased by the groom to sixty thousand. 
The second incident was when Joliet, 
amid the almost incredulous surprise of 
the whole table, raised the gift, by the ad- 
dition of ten thousand, to seventy thou- 
sand francs : the money was the product 
of his former house and garden — that 
house of shreds and patches which had 
cost him ten francs. When it came to 
affixing the signatures, the notary appeal- 



ed to Joliet for his name. He could not 
sign it, being gouty and half forgetful of 
pen-practice, but he responded to the 
question as bold as a lion : "John Thom- 
as Joliet, baron de Rouviere," throwing 




SQUARE OF THE HOTEL DE VILLE, BRUSSELS. 



to the lawyer a fine bunch of papers bear- 
ing witness to the validity of the title ; 
after which he added, no less proudly, 
"wine-merchant, wholesale and retail, at 
the sign of the Golden Chickens, Noisy." 

In truth, Joliet's father had rightfully 
borne the title of baron de Rouviere, but, 
ruined by '48, had abandoned the prac- 
tice of signing it. Joliet resumed it for 
this special occasion, having every war- 
rant for the act, but whispered to me that 
he should never so call himself in future, 
greatly preferring the enumeration of his 
qualities on his business-card. 

Poor Francine meanwhile had looked 
so timid and blushed so that Frau Kra- 
nich nodded to her permission of ab- 
sence. She gave one glance at Fort- 
noye, buried her face in her hands, 
laughed a sweet little gurgle, and fled. 
When her presence was again necessary, 
she reappeared, drowned in white. We 
went to the mayor's office, where she lost 
a pretty little surname that had always 
seemed to fit her like a glove ; then to 
the church, an obscure one in the neigh- 
borhood of Frau Kranich's house. But 
at the door of the sacred edifice the elder 
lady said, with much conciliatory grace 
in her manner, "I claim exemption from 



266 



THE AEW HYPERION. 













witnessing this part of the ceremony ; and 
you, Mr. Flemming, must resume or dis- 
cover your Protestantism and enter the 
carriage with me. I must show you a 
little of the city while these young birds 
are pairing." 

No objection was made to this rather 
strange proposal. The bride, between 
her father and hus- 
band, forgot that 
she had no friend 
of her own sex to 
stand near her. 
We arranged for a 
general meeting at 
the dinner. 

In the carriage 
she said, " I brought 
you away because 
I am devoured 
with uneasiness. 
Mrs. Ashburleigh 
wrote me that she 
would certainly be 
here for at least the 
principal part of 
the ceremony. I do 
not know what to 
make of it. It may 
be of no use, but we will scour the city. 
These throngs, this noise, make me un- 
easy. I fear some accident, having," she 
added with a smile, "one lone woman's 
sympathy for another lone woman." 

I peered through the crowds at this, 
right and left, with inexpressible emotion. 
Perhaps this accidental sort of quest was 
that which destiny had arranged for the 
solution of my life-problem. To light 
upon Mary Ashburleigh in these festal 
throngs, perhaps wanting assistance, per- 
haps calling upon my name even now 
through her velvet lips, was a chance the 
mere notion of which made my blood 
leap. 

When Brussels gives herself over to 
holiday-making, she does it in a whole- 
souled and self-consistent way that has 
plenty of attractiveness. The houses 
seemed to have turned themselves inside 
out to replenish the streets. People in 
their best clothes, equipages, processions, 
bands, troops of children, filled the av- 
enues. Some conjecture that there might 






JIVERS DIVERSIONS. 



have been a mistake about the church 
took us to the cathedral of St. Gudule. 
Here, amid the superb spectrums of the 
stained windows, we searched through 
the vari-colored throngs that covered the 
floor, but no familiar face looked upon 
us. Strange to us as the old, impassive 
monumental dukes of Brabant who oc- 
cupy the niches, the people made way to 
let us pass from the doorway between the 
lofty brace of towers to the high altar, 
which is a juggler's apparatus, and has 
concealed machinery causing the sacred 
wafer to come down seemingly of its 
own accord at the moment when the 
priest is about to lift the Host. All was 
unfamiliar and splendid, and we came 
away, feeling as if our own little wed- 
ding-group would have been lost in so 
magnificent a tabernacle. The Grande 
Place, on which lay the wedge-like shad- 
ow of the high-towered Hotel de Ville, 
was perhaps as thronged a honeycomb 
of buzzing populace as when Alva look- 
ed out upon it to see the execution of 
Egmont and Horn. Among all the good- 
natured Netherlandish countenances that 
paved the square there was none that re- 
sponded to my own. 

We drove vaguely through the princi- 
pal streets, and then, baffled, made our 
way to the faubourg in which is situated 
the zoological garden, toward which a 
considerable portion of the inhabitants 
was going even as ourselves. At the en- 
trance our carriage encountered that of 
the bride and groom, and soon the whole 
party of the breakfast-table assembled 
by the gate, for the great coffee-rooms 
at which our meal was laid were close 
by the garden, and a promenade in this 
famous living museum was a premedi- 
tated part of the day's enjoyment. We 
entered the grounds in character, frankly 
putting forward our claims as a wedding- 
procession. That is the delightful French 
custom among those who are brought up 
as Francine had been : her father would 
have been heartbroken to have been de- 
nied the proud exhibition of his joy, and 
Fortnoye was too great a traveler, too 
cosmopolitan, to object to a little family 
pageant that he had seen equaled or ex- 
ceeded in publicity in most of the Cath- 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



267 



olic countries on the globe. Francine, 
her artisanne cap for ever lost, her gleam- 
ing dark hair set, like a Milky Way, with 
a half wreath of orange-blossoms, the 
silvery gauzes of her protecting 
veil floating back from her fore- 
head, strayed on at the head of 
the little parade. She was wrap- 
ped in the delicious reverie of the 
wedding-day. She was not yel- 
low nor meagre, nor uglier than 
herself, as so many brides con- 
trive to be. Her air of delicacy 
and tenderness was a blossom 
of character, not a canker of ill- 
health. Her color was hardly 
raised, though her head was per- 
petually bent. Fortnoye, hold- 
ing her on his firm arm, seemed 
like a man walking through en- 
chantments. Just behind, pro- 
tecting Madame Kranich with an 
action of effusive gallantry that 
must have been seen to be con- 
ceived, walked the baron de Rou- 
viere, his brave knotted hands, 
for which he had not found any 
gloves, busily occupied in point- 
ing .out the animated rarities that 
to him seemed most worthy of 
selection. The hilarious hyenas, 
the seals, the polar bears plung- 
ing from their lofty rocks, all at- 
tracted his commendation ; and 
we, who walked behind in such 
order as our friendships or famil- 
iarity taught us, were perpetually 
tripping upon his honest figure 
brought to a halt before some 
object more than usually inter- 
esting. Exclamations of delight 
at the bride's beauty, politely 
wrapped in whispers, arose on 
all sides as we penetrated the 
throng: it was a proud thing to 
be a part of a procession so distinguished. 
My good Joliet beamed with complacen- 
cy, and drove his little herd up and down 
and across and about till the greater part 
of the garden was explored. The zoo- 
logical garden of Brussels has the beau- 
ty of not showing too obviously the cha- 
racter of a prison. It is extensive, um- 
brageous, and the poor captives within 



its borders have enough air and space 
around their eyes to give them a sem- 
blance of liberty. For the special feast- 
day on which we visited it the place had 




THE MIMIC HUNT. 

been arranged with particular adaptation 
to the character of the time. There were 
elephant-races and rides upon the camels 
free to all ladies who would make the 
venture. In addition to the zebras, gnus 
and Shetlands, there was that species of 
race-horse which never wins and never 
spoils a course, being of wood and con- 
structed to go round in a tent, and never 



268 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



to arrive anywhere or lose any prizes. 
The pelicans were in high excitement, 
for all along their beautiful little river, 
where it winds through bowery trees, a 
profusion of living fish had been emptied 
and confined here and there by grated 
dams, so that the awkward birds had op- 
portunity to angle in perfect freedom and 
to their hearts' content. In the more 
wooded part of the garden a mimic hunt 
had been arranged, and sportsmen in cor- 
rect suits of green, with curly brass horns 
and baying hounds, coursed through the 
grounds, following a stag which, though 
mangy and asthmatic, may yet have been 
a descendant of the fawn that fed Gene- 
vieve of Brabant. We had re-entered 
one of the grand alleys, and were re- 
ceiving again the little tribute of enco- 
miums which the greater privacy of the 
groves had pretermitted — we were parad- 
ing happily along, conscious of nothing 
to be ashamed of, our orange-blossoms 
glistening, our veil flying, our broadcloth 
and wedding-favors gleaming — when we 
met another group, which, though more 
furtively, bore that matrimonial charac- 
ter which distinguished our own. 

At the head walked Mr. Cookson & 
Jenkinson. He still wore that species 
of shooting-costume which he had made 
his uniform, but it was decked with roses, 
and his hands were encased in milk- 
white gloves : on his hands, besides the 
gloves, he had the two grammatical la- 
dies from the Rhine steamboat in guise 
of bridesmaids. Behind him walked 
Mary Ashburleigh. And emerging from 
the skirts of Mary Ashburleigh's dress, 
with the embarrassed happiness of a 
middle-aged bridegroom, was — no ? yes ! 
no, no ! but yes — was Sylvester Berkley. 

I will not expose what I suffered to 
the curiosity of imperfectly sympathetic 
strangers. I did not faint, and I believe 
men in genuine despair never do so. 
But I felt that weakness and unmanage- 
ableness of knee which comes with strong 
mental anguish, and I sank back impo- 
tent upon the baron, whose lingering legs 
repudiated the pressure, so that we both 
accumulated miserably upon Grandstone. 
My eyes closed, and I did not hear the 
Dark Ladve's salutations to Frau Kra- 



nich. But I awoke to see with anguish 
a sight that drew involuntary applause 
from all that careless crowd. 

It was the salute of the two brides. 
Imagine, if you can, two great purple 
pansies, flushed with all the perfumed 
sap of an Eden spring-time, threaded 
with diamonds of myriad-faceted dew, — 
imagine them leaning forward on their 
elastic stems until both their soft velvet 
countenances cling together and ex- 
change mutually their caparisons of 
honeyed gems ; then let them sway gen- 
tly back, and balance once more in their 
morning splendor. Such was the effect 
when these two imperial creatures ap- 
proached each other and imprinted with 
lips and palms a sister's salute. Mary Ash- 
burleigh, whom the throng recognized 
as a natural empress, was arrayed this 
morning as brides are seldom arrayed, 
but with a sense of artistic obedience to 
her own sumptuous nature and person- 
ality. The royal purple of her velvets 
was cut, on skirt and bodice, into one 
continuous fretwork of heavy scrolls and 
leafage, and through the crevices of this 
textile carving shone the robe she carried 
beneath: it was tawny yellow, for she 
wore under her outward dress a com- 
plete robe of ancient lace, whose cob- 
web softness was more than half sacri- 
ficed — only perceived as the slashes of 
her velvets made it evident. It was such 
dressing as queens alone should indulge 
in perhaps, but Mary Ashburleigh chose 
for once to do justice to her style and her 
magnificence. 

I was leaning against a tree, stunned 
in the sick sunshine. I heard, while my 
eyes were closed, a sort of voluminous 
cloudy roll, and the Dark Ladye was 
beside me. She whispered quickly and 
volubly in my ear, " I tried to confide in 
you, but I could not get it spoken. Yet 
I managed to confess that my heart had 
been touched. It was only this summer 
— at the Molkencur over Heidelberg — 
he lectured about the ruins. 'Twas in- 
formation — 'twas rapture! I found at 
once he was the Magician. We were 
quietly united at the embassy this morn- 
ing. And now he can leave that dread- 
ful consulate and has got his promotion, 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



269 



for he is to be charge here in Brussels. 
It is sudden, but we were positively afraid 
to do it in any other way, I am such a 
timid creature. When I saw the travel- 
ers' agent on the steamboat, I was at first 
struck with his manly British bearing and 
his resemblance to Sylvester. Then I 
found he had the matrimonial prospectus, 
and perceived he might be a link. He 
has managed everything beautifully. I 
had no idea — With his assistance you 
need no more mind being married than 
going into a shop for a plate of pudding. 
You must come up and be presented, to 
show you bear no malice." 

I cannot tell how I did it, but I allow- 
ed Sylvester and the agent to grasp my 
hands, one on either side. Berkley, as 
to his collar, his cravat, his face and his 
white gloves, presented one general sur- 
face of mat silver. He clasped me with 
some affection, but his intellect had quite 
gone, and he said it was a fine day. 

I did not rally in the least until after 
my fourth glass of champagne at the 
dinner. We made one party : indeed, 
Mrs. Ashburleigh had brought her hus- 
band hither in that expectation. Fort- 
noye vanished a minute to arrange the 
banquet-room ; and as his wife rushed 
in to find him, followed by the rest of us, 
he snatched a great damask cloth from 
the table, and there was such a set-out 
of flowers and viands as has seldom been 
seen in Belgium or elsewhere. The table, 
instead of a cloth, was entirely laid with 
young emerald vine-leaves : our places 
were marked, and at each plate was a 
gift for the bride, ostensibly coming from 
the person who sat there, but really pro- 
vided by the forethought of Fortnoye. 
In front of my own cover two pretty 
downy chicks were pecking in a cottage 
made of crystal slats and heavily thatch- 
ed with spun glass — the prettiest bird- 
cage in the world. On the eaves was an 
inscription : "The Man of the Two Chick- 
ens." It happened that the little keep- 
sake I had found for Francine consisted 
of wheat-ears in pearls and gold, adapt- 
ed for brooch and eardrops ; so I only 
had to drop them in beside the chickens 
and the present was appropriate and 
complete. 



I cannot tell of the effect as Mary Ash- 
burleigh swept into that splendid ban- 
queting-room, one long pyramid of vel- 
vet pierced with webbed interstices of 
light. If the largest window of St. Ur- 
sula's church had come down and en- 
tered the room, the spectacle could not 
have been so superb. One item struck 
me : the younger bride, of course, wore 
orange buds; but for the Englishwoman, 
a beauty ripe with many summers, buds 
and blossoms were inappropriate ; she 
wore fruits : in the grand coronal of plaits 
that massed itself upon her head were set, 
like gems, three or four small, delicious, 
amber-scented mandarin oranges. With 
this piece of exquisite apropos did the 
infallible Mary Ashburleigh crown the 
edifice of her good taste. The two brides 
sat opposite each other. A small watch, 
which I had happened to buy at Coblenz, 
I managed to detach and lay on the Dark 
Ladye's plate as my offering. On a card 
beside it I merely wrote, "Another 
Time!" 

Who knows ? Perhaps Sylvester may 
fill and founder as the other has done. 
He looks miserably bilious and fright- 
ened. 

I had rather partake of a rare dinner 
than describe one. The wines alone rep- 
resented all the cellars of the Rhine and 
the whole champagne country. Fort- 
noye, who gave the feast, entertained 
both Sylvester's party and his own with 
regal good cheer. Think not that Henri 
Fortnoye was the ordinary obfuscated, 
superfluous, bewildered bridegroom. On 
the contrary, assuming immediately the 
head of his own table, he took the re- 
sponsibility of the party's merriment, 
and made the good humor flow like the 
wine. I know not how it was, but ere 
the meal was over I found myself join- 
ing in one of his choruses ; Frau Kra- 
nich forgot her asceticism and exhumed 
all her youthful air of gayety ; James 
Athanasius Grandstone promised the 
host to set his wines running in every 
State of America. But the prettiest mo- 
ment was when the two brides rose and 
touched glasses, mutually and to the 
health of the company, apropos of a 
little wedding-song which Fortnoye had 



270 



THE NEW HYPERION. 




HOMEWARD BOUND. 



composed and was trolling at the head 
of our willing chorus. 

CONCLUSION. 

I have arrived at Marly, and, with the 
assistance of much sarcasm from Hohen- 
fels, am getting on with considerable spir- 
it at my Progressive Geography. When 
a man's Hope ceases temporarily to take 
a merely Human aspect, may it not suf- 
fer a fresh avatar and begin in a new 
and Geographical form its beneficent 
career? The Dark Ladye has sunk be- 
neath my horizon, but speculations over 
the Atlantean and Lunar Mountains are 
still succulent and vivifying. 

I fled, lashed by a hundred despairs 
and by many symptoms of headache 
and dyspepsia, from the wedding-feast at 




Brussels. Charles and the baron of Ho- 
henfels accompanied me. It was a night- 
train. The spectacle of so much wedded 
happiness was too much for me, too much 
for Hohenfels. The effect was, contra- 
rily, rather stimulating to Charles, who 
has made a match with Josephine, and 
with her assistance is now listening, the 
tear of sensibility in his eye, to Mendels- 
sohn's "Wedding March" as executed 
by the village organ ! 

We passed Valenciennes, Somain, 
Douai, Arras, Amiens, Clermont, Criel, 
Pontoise — the last points of merely bod- 
ily travel that I shall ever make : here- 
after my itineracy shall be entirely the- 
oretical. We took a carriage at Pon- 
toise, and traversed the woods of Saint- 
Germain. As I neared home I bowed 
right and left to amicable and smiling 
neighbors, who waved me good - day 



my 01: ~ 

CHARLES AND JOSEPHINE. 




ARGUS AND ULYSSES. 



THE NEW HYPERION. 



271 



from their doors. So did my 
Newfoundland, who broke his 
chain and leaped upon my 
shoulders, flourishing his tail 
— overjoyed to salute the re- 
turning Ulysses. 

In the British Museum, 
among the Elgin Marbles, 
Phidias has carved a pile of 
heaped-up marble waves, and 
out of them rise the arms of 
Hyperion — the most beautiful 
arms in the world. Homesick 
for heaven, those weary arms 
try to free themselves of the 
clinging foam. Another min- 
ute and surely the triumphant 
god will leap from his watery 
couch and guide with unerring hands the 
coursers of the Dawn ! But that reluctant 
minute is eternal, and the divinity still 
remains incapable, clogged and wrapped 
in the embrace of marble waves. Yet 
the real sun every morning succeeds in 
equipping himself for his journey, and 
arrives, glad, at his welcome bath in the 
western sea. 

The inference I draw is : If you want 
a career to be eternal instead of transi- 
tory, hand it over to Art. 




"HAND IT OVER TO ART. 

The true moral of it all is, that we are 
all savage myths of the Course of the 
Sun. We disappear any number of times, 
but we rise and trail new clouds of glory, 
and our readers or our audiences perceive 
that it is the same old Hyperion back 
again. The youth who by the faithful 
hound, half buried in the snow, is found 
far up on the most inaccessible peaks 
of imagination, is perceived to grasp still 
in his hand of ice that Germanesque and 
strange device — Anf Wiedersehen. 




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